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Google's dermatology app underrepresents dark skin tones in training data

Google unveiled a dermatology app that uses deep learning to recognise skin conditions. However, the training data included only 3.5% images from patients with darker skin types, which may lead to inaccurate diagnoses for these groups. Dermatologists have expressed concern that the app could cause false positives or missed diagnoses, and Google has acknowledged the issue while saying it will continue to refine the technology.

Date it happened
2021-05-18
Organisation involved
Google
Product, system or model
AI-powered dermatology assist tool
Where this came from
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