FaceApp Apologizes Over Racist Algorithm That Lightens Skin Tone Of Face Photos

An appearance-shifting effect that could radically or subtly changes how a person looks is under fire for being racist. The effect of the FaceApp includes a change in aging, gender, and hotness. It is the hotness filter that was called a racist algorithm because it lightened skin tones as part of its beautifying effect.

The furor caused by the racist algorithm made Yaroslav Goncharov, founder and CEO of FaceApp, issue an apology. He attributed it to an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias. Goncharov said the racist algorithm is not an intended behavior, Tech Crunch reports.

“To mitigate the issue, we have renamed the effect to exclude any positive connotation associated with it. We are also working on the complete fix that should arrive soon,” he assures. Following the controversy that the racist algorithm caused, FaceApp temporarily changed its name to “spark” from “hotness.” The viral popularity of the algorithm resulted in 700,000 users being added per day.

FaceApp’s racist algorithm, or photo-filtering app, besides lightening people’s skin tone, also narrows the nose of users, SBS reports. SnapChat was previously in hot water over similar filters that apparently altered the user’s race. Meitu, a Chinese selfie app, has an angelic filter that whitewashes the features of its Asian user.

The controversy caused by the racist algorithm of FaceApp is explained to the increasing use by technology companies of forms of sophisticated artificial intelligence to analyze and process images. It recognizes objects or elements within an image and edits removes or replaces the elements automatically without disturbing the background elements.

As an example of how the racist algorithm changes race, fetty wop tweeted two images of singer Drake who became a 60-year-old white man working the docs when the FaceApp filter was used, The Verge reports. Kevin Nguyen asked in a tweet, “Is the filter supposed to turn you into a mediocre white guy?”