Racial Bias in AI Isn't Getting Better – Neither Are Researchers' Excuses

This article originally appeared on VICE US. An AI-powered portrait generator went viral last week thanks to its ability to turn selfies into realistic Impressionist portraits. For people of color, however, the results leave much to be desired. The flaw in AI Portrait Ars, an app built by researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, was first pointed out by Morgan Sung, a reporter at Mashable. She found that the app "whitened my skin to an unearthly pale tone, turned my flat nose into one with a prominent bridge and pointed end, and replaced my very hooded eyes with heavily lidded ones."