Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are known to reproduce and amplify human prejudice about race or gender, but correcting such discriminatory bias has proved challenging. US President Donald Trump’s return to power appears to have nipped in the bud any hopes of progress – unless Europe can stand up to the deregulatory wave.
Dilapidated buildings, streets littered with trash, and cheerless residents sporting dirty clothes with holes in them. That’s how the AI-powered image creator Midjourney portrayed France’s suburbs, the banlieues, in 2023, peddling negative stereotypes about the suburban neighbourhoods surrounding French cities.
The disparaging portrayal of French suburbs was the subject of a viral campaign by ride-hailing app Heetch, which invited residents to send postcards to Midjourney’s developers urging them to remove banlieue bias from their AI model.
As the campaign showed, searches for “banlieue school” or “banlieue wedding” revealed startling prejudice, contrasting sharply with images representing non-suburban France.
A discriminatory bias is equally present in AI chatbots, particularly regarding coloured people, women and those with disabilities, says journalist Rémy Demichelis, who has written a book on bias in artificial intelligence systems (“L’Intelligence artificielle, ses biais et les nôtres”).
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
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