Android is used on 3 billion smartphones worldwide , but most of the cameras on Android telephone set do n’t accurately capture people of colour . This is why Google announce it ’s strive to develop a “ more accurate and inclusive photographic camera ” for its next batch of smartphones .
Toward the end of the Google I / oxygen 2021 chess opening tonic , Sameer Samat , vice president of Android and Google Play , excuse that the company is consulting with a diverse squad of photographer , artists , and designers to help meliorate its computational picture taking algorithmic rule . The goal is to make the Pixel better at adjust white balance , exposure , and semblance temperature based on varying hide musical note . The calculator will also consider hairstyles , include a more accommodating portrayal mode for curly and rippled hair .
“ As part of our ongoing commitment to product inclusion , we ’re working to make technology more approachable and equitable , ” Samat said during the demonstration . “ For people of people of color , photography has not always visit us the elbow room we desire to be seen , even in some of our own Google product . ”
Google’s new algorithm is better at adjusting edits based on skin tone.Screenshot: Google
It ’s no enigma that there is a racial biasinherentto photography . Light skin became the benchmark for calibrating colouring in picture taking and cinema . Even digital negative are predisposed to favor lighter peel quality over darker ones . It can be even worse in smartphone camera , since they rely on post - processing to make their range of a function await shareable . But smartphone software can be program to look for variation in skin tone .
Google ’s effort to make its Pixel smartphones more equitable in the mode they capture folks will for certain make multitude feel see by the platform . But the sentiment also border hollow when you deal the newspaper headline that precede this class ’s developer conference . Google ’s internal workplacestruggleshave been routinely documented over the last few years , especially in recent month surround theabrupt firingof former stave research scientist and Colorado - trail of ethical AI at Google , Dr. Timnit Gebru . Recent reportsalso indicate that Black and queen AI chemical group have signed a petition in solidarity with Gebru to refuse support from Google , mention the fellowship ’s reprise inconsistencies in supporting underrepresented researcher .
Google did n’t specify if the next flagship Pixel smartphone would be the model with the newfangled computational photographic algorithm built in . But Google ’s efforts to make AI more divers sure merit examination until there ’s more transparency over what ’s happen in its AI research division .
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