In a memo on Tuesday evening, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company’s artificial intelligence mistakes that led to Google taking its Gemini imaging feature offline for further testing.
Pichai called the issues “problematic” and said they “offended our users and showed bias.” The news was first reported by Semaphore.
Google introduced the image generator earlier this month through Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models. The tool allows users to enter prompts to create an image. In the past week, users discovered historical inaccuracies that went viral online, and the company pulled the feature last week, saying it would relaunch it in the coming weeks.
“I know some of his responses offended our users and showed bias – to be clear, this is completely unacceptable and we got it wrong,” Pichai said. “No one’s AI is perfect, especially at this nascent stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us.”
The news follows Google changing the name of its chatbot from Bard to Gemini earlier this month.
Picha’s memo said teams are working around the clock to address the issues and that the company will introduce a clear set of actions and structural changes, as well as “enhanced launch processes.”
“We have always strived to give consumers useful, accurate and unbiased information in our products,” Pichai wrote in the note. “That’s why people trust them. This should be our approach for all of our products, including our emerging AI products.â€
I want to address recent issues with problematic responses to text and images in the Gemini (formerly Bard) app. I know some of his responses offended our users and showed bias – to be clear, this is completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve these issues. We’re already seeing significant improvement across a wide range of prompts. No AI is perfect, especially at this nascent stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we’ll stick to it for as long as it takes. And we’re going to review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.
Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacred. We have always strived to provide users with useful, accurate and unbiased information in our products. That’s why people trust them. This should be our approach for all our products, including our emerging AI products.
We will manage a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidance, improved launch processes, robust evaluations and red teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking into all of this and will make the necessary changes.
Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we also need to build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in AI over the past few weeks. This includes some seminal advances in our base models, for example our breakthrough with 1 million long contexts and our open models, both of which have been well received.
We know what it takes to build great products that are used and loved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise, we have an incredible springboard for the AI wave. Let’s focus on what matters most: creating useful products that deserve the trust of our users.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/28/google-ceo-tells-employees-gemini-ai-blunder-unacceptable.html
