Days after the Gemini AI faced backlash for its problematic text and image responses, Google CEO Sundar Pichai directly addressed the issue, admitting that the company made a mistake. Pichai expressed that the situation was “completely unacceptable” and emphasized ongoing efforts to rectify it. In a memo shared by Semafor, he stated, “Our teams are tirelessly working to address these issues, and we’re witnessing significant improvement across various prompts.”
For the past week, Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, has been embroiled in controversy. It began with the chatbot creating inaccurate historical images, such as portraying the Pope as a woman and Vikings as Black people. A viral query tested Gemini’s capabilities, where it struggled to definitively answer whether Elon Musk posting memes or Adolf Hitler is worse.
“I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong,” Pichai said in his memo addressing the company employees.
However, Pichai, in defense of Gemini, asserted, “No AI is perfect.” An excerpt from the memo reads, “No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us, and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.”
Pichai promised several actions will be taken to fix the issue, including making changes to how things are structured within the company, updating guidelines for products, making sure launches are better, testing things more thoroughly, and recommending changes to their technology. “We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes,” Pichai added.
Conclusion
Though Pichai is correct in stating that no AI is flawless, the problem lies not just in the inaccuracy but in Google’s premature release of its LLM without sufficient fine-tuning. As Pichai admitted, the company must conduct more rigorous testing on its products like Gemini before introducing them to the public.
