Singer Jade Thirlwall has criticised Microsoft after its software illustrated a story about racism with a picture of the wrong mixed-race member of Little Mix.
The South Shields-born star highlighted the mix up on social media after a story about her personal experiences with racism was illustrated with a photo of fellow bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock.
Last week, Jade revealed she had been a victim of vile racist bullying at school.
The 27-year-old, whose maternal grandfather is from Yemen and maternal grandmother is from Egypt, said she was made to feel ashamed about the colour of her skin.
However an article on msn.com, headlined "Little Mix star Jade Thirlwall says she faced horrific racism at school", was shown with a photo of Leigh-Anne instead of Jade.
Jade then wrote on Instagram: “@MSN If you’re going to copy and paste articles from other accurate media outlets, you might want to make sure you’re using an image of the correct mixed race member of the group.”
According to The Guardian, this was down to Microsoft’s artificial intelligence software.
The publication has reported that the firm plans to fire the human editors who run MSN.com and replace them with artificial intelligence code, and the photo mix up happened during an early rollout of the software.
The article said: "What Thirlwall could not have known, according to sources at the company, is that the image was selected by Microsoft’s artificial intelligence software, which is already responsible for editing parts of the news site, which attracts hundreds of millions of readers worldwide.
"Microsoft does not carry out original reporting but employs human editors to select, edit and repurpose articles from news outlets, including the Guardian.
"Articles are then hosted on Microsoft’s website and the tech company shares advertising revenue with the original publishers. At the end of last month, Microsoft decided to fire hundreds of journalists in the middle of a pandemic and fully replace them with the artificial intelligence software."
Regarding the incorrect image being used with the Jade Thirlwall story, a spokesman for the tech company told The Guardian: “As soon as we became aware of this issue, we immediately took action to resolve it and have replaced the incorrect image.”
Jade last week described her experiences in school.
Appearing on the No Country For Young Women podcast, she said: "I think because I was bullied quite badly in school because of the colour of my skin and for being Arab I wasn't very proud of who I was..
"Where I am from, if you weren't evidently black you were literally put in a bracket of being called the p-word.
"When I was at school if I was ever bullied for the colour of my skin I'd get so confused as I'd be like, well I'm not from Pakistan.
"I remember one time I got pinned down in the toilets and they put a bindi spot on my forehead, it was horrific."
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