‘Racist’ result of robot-judged Beauty.AI contest causes uproar

15-Sep-2016

Organisers tell Cosmetics Business that ahead of the next contest the company will double check all submitted algorithms for signs of discrimination

‘Racist’ result of robot-judged Beauty.AI contest causes uproar

Youth Laboratories, the organiser behind the world’s first robot-judged beauty contest Beauty.AI, has postponed its third Beauty.AI contest following widespread criticism that the results of the second were racially biased.

The company partnered with Wayco, the distributor of RYNKL, to create the first and second contests, which both saw consumers enter selfies to be judged by the winning algorithm submitted in a simultaneous developer competition.

The main reason why mostly European participants are in the leaderboard is that some ethnic groups were underrepresented in the Beauty.AI contest due to few entires

Anastasia Georgievskaya, Beauty.AI and RYNKL Project Manager

However, the results of the second contest, launched in April, caused uproar after the majority of the 44 winners were white; only one had dark skin, while a few winners were Asian.

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Anastasia Georgievskaya, Beauty.AI and RYNKL Project Manager, told Cosmetics Business that the idea initially was to make the contest more fair than traditional human-judged beauty contests where mostly young women participate.

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