Social media giant Facebook has apologised for putting a
“primates” label on a video of African-American men, according to US media
reports.

According to a report published in the New York Times, the
video in question was posted by a tabloid in June this year and showed African-American
men in altercations with white civilians and police officers. After the video
ended, an automatic message popped up that said “keep seeing videos about
Primates,” according to the report.

The report added that Facebook turned off the artificial
intelligence feature that showed the message and apologised for what it called
“an unacceptable error”. The social media company said that it would investigate
further so that it does not happen again.

“As we have said, while we have made improvements to our AI,
we know it is not perfect, and we have more progress to make. We apologise to
anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations,” a company
spokesperson told the New York Times.

Artificial intelligence has mislabelled people of colour
before. In 2015, Google apologized after it labelled a photo of two
African-American people as gorillas. Facebook and its photo-sharing app,
Instagram, have had their own struggles with issues related to race. After
July’s European Championship in soccer, for instance, three Black members of
England’s national soccer team were racially abused on the social network for
missing penalty kicks in the final.

Hundreds of employees also staged a virtual walkout last
year to protest the company’s handling of a post from President Donald Trump
about the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In an annual diversity report in July, Facebook had said
4.4% of its US-based employees were Black. The figure stood at up from 3.9 p%
the year before