Face Depixelizer turns Barack Obama white
A tool that transformed a pixelated image of Barack Obama into a white man sparked a vigorous debate about racial bias in AI. B ased on the PULSE image facialiser developed by Duke University researchers , Face Depixelizer generates high resolution, de-pixelated photos from low-resolution, pixelated ones and was p rimarily intended to upscale pixelated portraits of characters from a number of video game franchises. However, the tool was found t o struggle consistently with non-white faces, including those of US politician and Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and actress Lucy Liu. The incident called into question the tool's reliability and prom pted accusations of racism , including a heated public spat over the nature of algorithmic bias between Facebook chief AI scientist Yann LeCun. System 🤖 Face Depixelizer GitHub repository 🔗 Operator: Developer: Denis Malimonov Country: USA Sector: Politics Purpose : Improve image quality Technology: Computer vision; Pattern recognition Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Bias/discrimination - race, ethnicity; Representation
- Date it happened
- 2020-06-01
- Product, system or model
- Face Depixelizer
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.