GOOGLE EYES AI BIAS TWEAK

Google on Wednesday announced that it will use 10 shades in skin tone palettes for its gadgets and apps in an effort to reduce bias in its AI system.

In a statement, Alphabet Inc. said the new Monk Skin Tone (MST) Scale will be incorporated into various Google products over the coming months, saying the new scale will support inclusive products and research across the industry.

The MST scale, created by Havard professor and sociologist Ellis Monk, was designed to be easy to use for the development and evaluation of technology while representing a broader range of skin tones, adding that it’s more representative than other skin tone scales in the industry currently.

“In our research, we found that a lot of the time people feel they’re lumped into racial categories, but there’s all this heterogeneity with ethnic and racial categories,” Monk said in a statement.