Facebook apologizes after its AI recommendation feature categorized a video of Black men as “about Primates”; Facebook disabled the feature and is investigating
Facebook called it “an unacceptable error.” The company has struggled with other issues related to race.
New York TimesRyan Mac
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook’s removal of the feature turns a content-classification failure into an operational rollback. It also lands after allegations of racism in Facebook’s workplace culture, making the company’s response to race-related product harms more consequential than a standalone apology.
The incident has a clear precedent in Google Photos’ erroneous labeling of Black people, showing that harmful racial misclassification has persisted across major consumer AI products despite public apologies and promised fixes.
First-order effects
Facebook has disabled the affected recommendation feature, immediately withdrawing that function while it investigates the misclassification.
Facebook’s AI and product teams must account for the failure in the investigation, with the company publicly committed to treating it as unacceptable.
Second-order effects
The rollback puts Facebook’s safeguards for recommendation and classification features under sharper scrutiny, particularly because the company had already faced allegations concerning treatment of Black, Latinx, and Asian employees.
Google’s earlier image-labeling failure becomes a closer comparison point: both companies’ apologies highlight that fixing model behavior, rather than simply acknowledging harm, is the central product challenge.
Third-order effects
If comparable failures continue to surface, consumer AI platforms will face pressure to make racial-harm testing and escalation procedures a standard part of feature deployment rather than a post-incident response.
The pattern points toward trust in automated content systems being determined not only by accuracy overall, but by whether companies can prevent and rapidly disable discriminatory outputs.
The trend: Major consumer platforms are being judged increasingly on whether their AI safeguards prevent racial harms before automated features reach users.
Welp. This is not how I imagined I'd make the NYT, but at least it was for something important. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@simran
Simran Jeet Singh on x
14% of Americans are Black. Only 4.4% of Facebook's US employees are Black. https://twitter.com/...
@s_m_i
Stacy-Marie Ishmael on x
“Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement: “As we have said, while we have made improvements to our A.I., we know it's not perfect, and we have more progress to make. We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations."" “as we have said” http…
@sifill_ldf
Sherrilyn Ifill on x
An “unacceptable error.” Remember when Zuckerberg explained that the failure to take down the Kenosha “call to arms” post that Kyle Rittenhouse responded to was “an operational mistake”? https://twitter.com/...
@161partisan
@161partisan on x
At this point I almost expect Facebook to fuck up in the most mind-blowingly offensive ways with no consequences. #toobigtofail https://twitter.com/...
@farkasjohan
Johan Farkas on x
Facebook's AI labelled black men as ‘primates.’ Underlines the dire need for more research “beyond text-based analyses of overt and blatant racist speech” and into how “social media platforms' specific designs and policies play a key role in shaping racism"https://www.nytimes.com…
@blackamazon
@blackamazon on x
In 2016 Facebook found most of its mis and disinfo was racially based . They also concertedly made an effort to separate high profile Black orgs from Black technologists who critiques it using “diversity” incubators We actually have to have that reconciliation https://twitter.com…
@rmac18
@rmac18 on x
I couldn't have reported this story if Darci, a former Facebook content design manager of 4 years, had not flagged it to a group of former FB employees and then talked to me. This stuff is so important, but can only come out if brave folks speak up. https://twitter.com/...
@rebel19
Rebecca Carroll on x
I'm so thoroughly exhausted. Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts ‘Primates’ Label on Video of Black Men https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ericproegler
@ericproegler on x
Data Science needs the testing discipline. This report is a critical ethics problem. This is (or should be!) a crucial risk to brand and image. And... The number of unseen/unobserved AI errors is some gigantic multiple of the known issues, risking desired outcomes too. https://tw…
@nicoleperlroth
Nicole Perlroth on x
Everyday we see the limits, biases and pure idiocy of relying solely on AI. And yet we continue to allow ourselves to be guinea pigs. @RMac18 with the latest. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@kateconger
O...K on x
the fact that this has happened at multiple major tech companies really says something about the way AI is being built 👀 https://www.nytimes.com/...
@jason_kint
Jason Kint on x
If they were an ethical company, they would be proactively trying to break AI like this to make certain the bias isn't there and this doesn't happen. Instead once again, “Facebook shut off the feature and is investigating. It also apologized after we reached out.” - @RMac18 https…
@bernstein
Joe Bernstein on x
No one should take a technology that labels black people as “primates” seriously ever again
@bernstein
Joe Bernstein on x
As with ads/disinfo, I'd like to see the takeaway from stories like this, in addition to rightful anger, be that Facebook is a shitty technological product that relies on a kind of collective social delusion to take seriously https://twitter.com/...
@elamin88
Elamin Abdelmahmoud on x
Oh my god. https://twitter.com/...
@keithkurson
Keith Kurson on x
Don't turn on your “artificial intelligence-powered feature” if it can't pass this one fucking test. How are AI features still getting shipped if they can't pass the literal least they could do. https://twitter.com/...
@chriskeall
Chris Keall on x
Think I'll give Zuckerberg's Metaverse a swerve https://twitter.com/...
@tatendacheryl
Tatenda Musapatike on x
And this is why I got stay reminding people that tech is racist by virtue of the conscious OR unconscious bias of the not diverse teams that create it. But they're sorry, they'll do better. https://twitter.com/...
@rmac18
@rmac18 on x
This is what the AI-powered prompt looked like. The 3:30 minute video from the Daily Mail had nothing to do with “primates.” It was a set of two clips featuring Black men getting in altercations with a white male citizen and white police officers. https://www.nytimes.com/... http…
@rmac18
@rmac18 on x
The biggest tech co's have struggled with biases in AI. In 2015, Google Photos categorized Black people as “gorillas.” Six years later, Facebook, which has one of the largest repositories of photos on which to train its AI, is dealing w/ the same issue. https://www.nytimes.com/..…