Google pauses AI-generated images of people after ethnicity criticism

Google has put a temporary block on its new artificial intelligence model producing images of people after it portrayed German second world war soldiers and Vikings as people of colour. The tech company said it would stop its Gemini model generating images of people after social media users posted examples of images generated by the tool that depicted some historical figures – including popes and the founding fathers of the US – in a variety of ethnicities and genders. "We're already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation feature. While we do this, we're going to pause the image generation of people and will rerelease an improved version soon," Google said in a statement. Google did not refer to specific images in its statement, but examples of Gemini image results were widely available on X, accompanied by commentary on AI's issues with accuracy and bias, with one former Google employee saying it was "hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist". Jack Krawczyk, a senior director on Google's Gemini team, had admitted on Wednesday that the model's image generator – which is not available in the UK and Europe – needed adjustment.