Google's AI drops 'man' and 'woman' gender labels to avoid possible bias

Google has announced that its image recognition AI will no longer identify people in images as a man or a woman, reports Business Insider. The change was revealed in an email to developers who use the company's Cloud Vision API that makes it easy for apps and services to identify objects in images. In the email, Google said it wasn't possible to detect a person's true gender based simply on the clothes they were wearing. But Google also said that they were dropping gender labels for another reason: they could create or reinforce biases. 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.