Tech giant Google has quietly updated its algorithms recently “to promote greater skin-tone diversity” in image searches.
Bloomberg reports that Google recently updated its search algorithms in an effort to display more racially diverse image search results. The change was implemented without any formal announcement and aims to result in image searches that display a variety of skin tones when users search for certain terms related to beauty.
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, speaks at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, in San Francisco on 28 June 2012 ( KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/GettyImages )
Under the new algorithm, when users search for queries such as “beautiful skin,” and “professional hairstyles,” as well as other simpler queries like “woman,” or “happy family,” the search giant will return more racially diverse results.
A Google spokeswoman told Bloomberg in a statement: “We’ve started to roll out an improvement to Google Images to promote greater skin-tone diversity so more people can find relevant and helpful results. We’re in the early phases of this effort and are continuing to experiment to provide greater diversity in results.”
Google claims it has been attempting to remove racial bias from its algorithms for some time. In 2015, the company apologized after its photo app incorrectly identified black people as gorillas. Now the company is attempting to remove what it considers less obvious examples of bias, such as European standards of beauty and hair styles.
Breitbart News has previously outlined all the times that Google has altered or manipulated search results, often in relation to political or election issues.
Read more about Google’s latest silent algorithm changes at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com