Google temporarily disables AI image generation of people in Gemini

Amid backlash, Google has announced that Gemini will temporarily disable image generation of people while tweaks are made to the AI.

Over the past several days, Google’s Gemini AI chatbot has been under fire for skewing image generation of people towards darker skin tones. Google first acknowledged the problem yesterday, saying that it would address Gemini’s generation of people in historical context.

AI image generation has been ongoing for a while at this point, and these models tend to skew towards less diverse results when depicting people. Google’s model, though, presumably attempted to improve on that problem.

For now, image generation of people is fully disabled within Gemini. When someone attempts to use the AI chatbot to generate a picture of a person, Gemini comes back with a message saying:

We are working to improve Gemini’s ability to generate images of people. We expect this feature to return soon and will notify you in release updates when it does.

The message comes back in this same format on each prompt after a few seconds of loading. Google mirrored the message with an official statement posted to Twitter/X.

More on Gemini:

• Gemini can now set reminders with Google Tasks
• Gemini rolling out to Gmail, Docs, and more with Google One AI Premium
• Gemini on your phone but Google Assistant in your ears

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