(Fox Business) Resurfaced videos and comments from Google employees have come to light amid backlash to the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
The Alphabet-owned company apologized last week after users on social media flagged that Gemini’s image generator was creating inaccurate historical images that sometimes replaced White people with pictures of Black, Native American and Asian people.
In response, Google announced it would pause the image generation feature and rerelease an improved version once its issues have been addressed.
Amid the controversy, social media posts from Gemini Experiences senior director of product management Jack Krawczyk went viral.
Resurfaced videos and tweets of Google employees making political comments have come come under scrutiny amid backlash to the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. (Smith Collection/Gado/Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images/Twitter/Screenshot / Getty Images)
“White privilege is f—ing real,” Krawczyk wrote in a screenshot of a tweet dated April 13, 2018. “Don’t be an a—hole and act guilty about it – do your part in recognizing bias at all levels of egregious.”
On Jan. 20, 2021, Krawczyk allegedly wrote that President Biden’s inaugural address was “one of the greatest ever” for “acknowledging systemic racism” and “reiterating the American ideal is the dream for the world but we need to work on ourselves to earn it.”
“I’ve been crying in intermittent bursts for the past 24 hours since casting my ballot. Filling in that Biden/Harris line felt cathartic.” Krawczyk wrote in another unearthed tweet.
But Fox News Digital found a trove of other comments by Google employees that appeared to exhibit political biases.
Clément Farabet, the vice president of research at Google DeepMind (a research lab that created Gemini along with Google Research), made several comments in 2020 that applauded then-President-elect Joe Biden and disparaged then-President Trump and his supporters.
“Wow what a beautiful day for America and for the world. For women, for minorities, for our children, and really for anyone who’s not a selfish a***,” he tweeted on Nov. 7, 2020.
That same day, he called the Republican Party “pathetic.”
A split image of Jack Krawczyk and Google Gemini. (Fox News Digital / Getty Images / Getty Images)
Farabet also made several online comments in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
In one tweet, he mocked Trump and said he was “very impressed” the recently defeated president could read from a teleprompter.
After Senate Republicans condemned the actions of Trump on January 6, Farabet tweeted, “Oh f— you? You’ve supported this all the way.”
Jen Gennai, who now works as an AI ethics and compliance advisor at Google, gave a keynote address in 2021after she established the company’s global Responsible AI operations and governance team. She was tasked with ensuring Google met its AI principles, the company’s “ethical charter” for developing and deploying “fair, inclusive and ethical advanced technologies.”
In the address, Gennai revealed a personal “inclusion failure.”
“I treated every member of my team the same and expected that would lead to equally good outcomes for everyone. That was not true,” she said.
After getting feedback from some members of her team that they did not feel welcome because nobody “looked like them” in the broader organization or management team. She also claimed it was a “myth” that treating “marginalized and excluded” groups the same as others was fair.
The Google AI logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Gemini in the background in this photo illustration, taken in Brussels, Belgium, on February 8, 2024. (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“When we’re trying to be good allies, when we’re trying to be antiracist, we will make mistakes,” Gennai later said.
