They’re two of the biggest pop stars in the world, but Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock have been involved in a bizarre mix-up this week, thanks to Microsoft’s robot editor.
The AI editor posted a story about Ms Thirlwall’s experience with racism on the search site MSN.com, but mistakenly used a photo of her bandmate, Ms Pinnock.
Ms Thirlwall flagged the error on her Instagram Story, writing: “@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.”
She added that this isn’t the first time that the two singers have been confused for one another.
She added: “This s*** happens to @leighannepinnock and I ALL THE TIME that it’s become a running joke ... It offends me that you couldn’t differentiate the two women of colour out of four members of a group … DO BETTER!”
According to The Guardian, who first reported the error, the mistake was made by Microsoft’s robot editor, which MSN has been using over the last month.
The reason for the mistake remains unclear.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said: “Whilst removing bias and improving accuracy remain an area of focus for AI research, this mistake was not a result of these issues.
"In testing a new feature to select an alternate image, rather than defaulting to the first photo, a different image on the page of the original article was paired with the headline of the piece. This made it erroneously appear as though the headline was a caption for the picture.
"As soon as we became aware of this issue, we immediately took action to resolve it, replaced the incorrect image and turned off this new feature.”
Last month, Microsoft replaced almost 80 journalists and editorial workers with artificial intelligence systems.
Microsoft said: “Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, re-deployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic.”
However, the Little Mix-up suggests that Microsoft’s AI may not be as foolproof as the tech giant hopes…
.jpg?w=600)
