‘We definitely messed up’: why did Google AI tool make offensive historical images?

Experts say Gemini was not thoroughly tested, after image generator depicted variety of historical figures as people of colour

Google's co-founder Sergey Brin has kept a low profile since quietly returning to work at the company. But the troubled launch of Google's artificial intelligence model Gemini resulted in a rare public utterance recently: We definitely messed up."

Brin's comments, at an AI hackathon" event on 2 March, follow a slew of social media posts showing Gemini's image generation tool depicting a variety of historical figures - including popes, founding fathers of the US and, most excruciatingly, German second world war soldiers - as people of colour.