Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, experienced a significant decline in its stock value following the troubled launch of its AI chatbot, Gemini. Shares for Alphabet dropped by up to 4.4 percent, resulting in a loss of over $70 billion.
Gemini’s image generation feature was temporarily suspended after it refused to create images of White people, even in historical contexts like the Founding Fathers. Google acknowledged the inaccuracies in the historical image generation depictions and announced that the feature would be fixed and relaunched in a few weeks.
Gemini, previously known as Google Bard, is one of the many multimodal large language models (LLMs) accessible to the public. These AI models provide human-like responses that can vary based on contextual information, the language and tone of the prompt, and the training data used to create the AI’s responses.
Fox News Digital conducted tests on Gemini and consistently received similar answers. When asked to show a picture of a White person, Gemini declined, stating that it avoids reinforcing harmful stereotypes and generalizations based on race. The AI emphasized that individuals of all races have unique experiences and perspectives, and reducing them to a single image based on skin color is inaccurate and unfair.
Jack Krawczyk, the senior director of product management at Gemini Experiences, acknowledged the concerns raised by social media users and assured that improvements would be made to address the depictions. While Gemini’s AI image generation covers a wide range of people and is globally used, it fell short in this aspect.
Gemini faced additional controversy for its responses to moral questions. When asked if pedophilia is wrong, the AI claimed the issue was multifaceted and required a more nuanced answer, which many considered inappropriate.
Despite these setbacks, Google remains committed to enhancing its AI technologies and providing accurate and inclusive representations. The relaunch of Gemini’s image generation feature is anticipated in the coming weeks, along with improvements to address user concerns.
