Google AI Won't Use 'Man' or 'Woman' to ID People, Says Business Insider

An automated service will no longer label people as male or female, according to a report from Business Insider. Google's Cloud Vision API, a "computer vision" product that has the ability to "[a]ssign labels to images and quickly classify them into millions of predefined categories," might be making some changes to two specific labels. Business Insider claimed to have seen a Feb. 20 email from Google to developers, which stated that the company would avoid using gendered labels for its image tags. Business Insider claimed that this was a direct quote from the email: "Given that a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance, we have decided to remove these labels in order to align with the Artificial Intelligence Principles at Google, specifically Principle #2: Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias." In the Artificial Intelligence Principles published by Google AI, Principle #2 states: "We will seek to avoid unjust impacts on people, particularly those related to sensitive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, income, sexual orientation, ability, and political or religious belief."