Google faces allegations of racist bias in its search algorithms

Google is facing criticism after a US high school student drew attention to racial bias and media profiling in its search algorithms. Kabir Alli carried out a search for “three black teenagers”. Overwhelmingly, the results produced showed police mug shots. An equivalent search for “three white teenagers” produced images of fresh-faced and happy individuals. Kabir Alli tweeted his discovery, which has now been retweeted over 60,100 times and favourited 55,500 times. Alli’s video was also re-posted by the website World Star Hip Hop which has a major social media following. Another student previously caused Google similar embarrassment when she showed that a search for “unprofessional hairstyles for work” produced pictures of African-American hair. The search received 13,000 retweets.

A simple Google image search highlighted on Twitter has been said to highlight the pervasiveness of racial bias and media profiling.

“Three black teenagers” was a trending search on Google on Thursday after a US high school student pointed out the stark difference in results for “three black teenagers” and “three white teenagers”.



Kabir Alli of Virginia posted a clip to Twitter of himself carrying out a straightforward search of “three black teenagers”, which overwhelmingly turns up prisoners’ mugshots.

“Now let’s just change the colour ...”

He and others erupt in laughter when the result for “three white teenagers” show stock photos of smiling, wholesome-looking young people.

YOOOOOO LOOK AT THIS pic.twitter.com/uY1JysFm8w — July 3rd. (@iBeKabir) June 7, 2016

The tweet has been retweeted by more than 60,100 users and favourited nearly 55,500 times since it was posted on Tuesday – but Alli’s video was later reposted by World Star Hip Hop, an entertainment website with an enormous following on social media.

Alli told Guardian Australia that he had heard about the discrepancy in search results from friends. “When I saw the results for myself I was shocked.”

He said some users had responded to his tweet calling Google racist, which he said was “preposterous”.

I'm weak at y'all saying Google is racist 😂😂😂 — July 3rd. (@iBeKabir) June 8, 2016

“The results were formed through the algorithm they set up. They aren’t racist but I feel like they should have more control over something like that.”

The results reached by Alli differ to what Google Images displays for “three black teenagers” now, partly as a result of coverage of his experiment.

It follows a similar exercise by student Bonnie Kamona, who posted a screenshot of search results for “unprofessional hairstyles for work”, showing natural African-American hair.

“Professional hairstyles for work” was dominated by pictures of blonde, white women.

I saw a tweet saying "Google unprofessional hairstyles for work". I did. Then I checked the 'professional' ones 🙃🙃🙃 pic.twitter.com/5KLg7FZ6Hq — madikizela malema (@BonKamona) April 5, 2016

Kamona’s screenshot also went viral when she posted it in early April, with close to 13,000 retweets.

It follows anger over reporting of the Stanford University sexual assault case, where the picture issued of perpetrator Brock Turner was taken from his high school yearbook instead of his police mugshot.

The image showed him smiling and wearing a suit, which social media users claimed would not have been the case if he had been black.

If Brock Turner was black, it'd be a mugshot plastered all over the news, a s grad pic of him clean-shaven in a suit. — Crystal (@crystalisc00l) June 7, 2016

We all know if Brock Turner was black his mugshot would've been released months ago. — Shayna Rain (@ShaynaRainMusic) June 7, 2016

has it ever taken 18 months for a mugshot of an accused black rapist to be released? #BrockTurner #DifferentRules #Privilege — lisa (@lisa__franklin) June 7, 2016

Would they have used a yearbook picture & hidden the mugshot for so long if the rapist was black? Smh. #BrockTurner — Natasha (@kagyiraki) June 7, 2016

Turner’s mugshot was only made public after he was sentenced last week.

Pic on the left is what media's used for rapist Brock Turner. Pic on the right is his actual mugshot... @ggreenwald pic.twitter.com/GArhVXEpYp — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) June 7, 2016

However, the New York magazine The Cut blog reported that the mugshot was taken on the day of the hearing last Thursday, not when he was arrested. The release of the photo was at the discretion of the arresting agency. The reason for the delay was not known.

World Star Hip Hop tweeted a meme comparing the sentences handed down to a black college student and Turner to its 1.5m followers on Thursday with the comment: “What is life?”

In July last year, Google was forced to apologise after its new photo app labelled two black people as “gorillas”. The photo service automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software.

“Google Photos, y’all fucked up. My friend’s not a gorilla,” Jacky Alciné tweeted.

Shortly after, Alciné was contacted by Yonatan Zunger, the chief architect of social at Google.



“Big thanks for helping us fix this: it makes a real difference,” Zunger tweeted to Alciné.