Twitter algorithm keeps white faces, crops out Black people, users say

Colin Madland, a white doctoral student, said the Twitter preview of a photo he posted of himself with a Black colleague was cropped down to only his face, CBS reported. Tony Arcieri, a programmer, also posted a telling demonstration of how the algorithm was behaving -- posting an image that included former President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell side by side. Twitter's cropping tool narrowed down to McConnell and cropped out Obama even when Arcieri tried altering the original image, CBS reported. The artificial intelligence isn't necessarily biased, experts say, but the technology appears to be "reflecting and amplifying historical patterns of discrimination" created by humans, said Sarah Myers West, who studies artificial intelligence bias at New York University, CBS reported.