Google blocks gender pronouns including 'him' and 'her' from its AI tool

Google is removing gender pronouns from the predictive text feature found in its Gmail platform. The feature will no longer suggest pronouns that indicate a specific gender such as'he', 'her', 'him' or'she' for fear of suggesting the wrong one and causing offence. Google staff have revealed the technology will not suggest gender-based pronouns because the risk is too high that its'Smart Compose' technology might predict someone's sex or gender identity incorrectly. The California-based firm's Smart Compose feature is found in Gmail which has 1.5 billion users around the world. Gmail product manager Paul Lambert said a company research scientist discovered the problem in January.