Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 24, 2025

Twitter's photo crop algorithm is biased toward white faces and women

Twitter's photo crop algorithm is biased toward white faces and women

A team of researchers found the social media giant’s auto-cropping tool most strongly discriminated in favour of white women.

New analysis released by Twitter has confirmed that the firm's automatic photo cropping algorithm discriminates on the basis of ethnicity and gender.

If presented with an image featuring a black man and a white woman, the algorithm would choose to show the woman 64 per cent of the time and the man 36 per cent of the time, Twitter's researchers found.

In comparisons of men and women, there was an 8 per cent difference in favour of women. The algorithm also showed an overall 4 per cent bias toward showing images of white people instead of black people.

In response, the social network said it would remove the feature, replacing it with new tools that would allow users to see a "true preview" of images added to tweets.

"One of our conclusions is that not everything on Twitter is a good candidate for an algorithm, and in this case, how to crop an image is a decision best made by people," Twitter's Director of Software Engineering Rumman Chowdhury wrote in a blog announcing the findings.

A similar test for the "male gaze," which aimed to discover whether the algorithm tended to focus on different parts of male and female-presenting bodies, found no evidence of bias.

When applied to technologies like facial recognition, the consequences of biased algorithms could reach far beyond an unfairly-cropped photo, according to Nicholas Kayser-Bril from Berlin-based NGO Algorithmwatch.

"Computer vision algorithms are known to depict people with darker skin tones as more violent and closer to animals, building on old racist tropes. This is very likely to have a direct effect on racialised people when such systems are used to detect abnormal or dangerous situations, as is already the case in many places in Europe," he told Euronews.

How does Twitter's algorithm work?


Until recently, images posted to Twitter have been cropped automatically by an algorithm trained to focus on "saliency" – a measure of the likelihood that the human eye will be drawn to a particular part of an image.

High saliency areas of an image typically include people, text, numbers, objects and high-contrast backgrounds.

However, a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm like the one used by Twitter is only as unbiased as the information it’s trained with, explained Kayser-Bril.

"If a Machine Learning algorithm is trained on a data set that does not contain data about certain groups or certain attributes, it will output biased results," he told Euronews.

"Building a fair data set is impossible if it is to apply to a society that is not fair in the first place. Therefore, what a model optimises for is more important than the data set it was trained with.

"Artificial Intelligence communities use benchmarks for their algorithms; they are very rarely related to fairness".

Twitter's 2021 inclusion and diversity report showed that its employees worldwide were 55.5 per cent male, 43.6 per cent female and less than one per cent nonbinary.

Figures for Twitter employees in the United States – the only territory for which the company publishes ethnicity statistics – show that 7.8 per cent of staff are black, falling to 6.2 per cent when only employees working in technical roles are taken into account.

The issue with Twitter's cropping algorithm caught widespread attention last year, when Canadian PhD student Colin Madland noticed that it would consistently choose to show him rather than his colleague – a black man – when presented with pictures of the two men.

Madland's tweet about the discovery went viral, prompting other users to post very long images featuring multiple people in an effort to see which one the algorithm would choose to show.

At the time, Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley said the company "tested for bias before shipping the model and didn't find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing," adding it was clear that Twitter had "more analysis to do".


Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Germany and Italy Under Pressure to Repatriate $245bn of Gold from US Vaults
Airlines Evaluate Flight Cancellations Amid Escalating US-Iran Tensions
Starmer Invites Innovators to Join Government Talent Scheme
UK Economy’s Strong Opening Quarter Shows Signs of Cooling
Harrods Seeks Court Order to Secure Al Fayed Estate for Victims
BA and Singapore Airlines Cancel Dubai Flights Amid Middle East Tensions
Trump Faces Backlash from MAGA Base Over Iran Strikes
Meta Bets $14 B on Alexandr Wang to Drive AI Ambitions
WATCH: Israeli forces show the aftermath of a massive airstrike at Iran's Isfahan nuclear site
FedEx Founder Fred Smith, ‘Heart and Soul’ of the Company, Dies at 80
Chinese Factories Shift Away from U.S. Amid Trump‑Era Tariffs
Pimco Seizes Opportunity in Japan’s Dislocated Bond Market
Labubu Doll Drives Pop Mart to Status as China’s Most Valuable Toy Maker
Global Coal Demand Defies Paris Accord Goals
We have new information and breaking details to share about what is shaping up to be a historic air campaign tonight
Six Massive Bombs Dropped on Fordow; Trump: 'A Historic Moment for the U.S., Israel, and the World'
Fordow: Deeply Buried Iranian Enrichment Site in U.S.–Israel Crosshairs
United States Conducts Precision Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites
US strikes Iran nuclear sites, Trump says
Pakistan to nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize.
BBC Demands Perplexity AI Immediately Stop Using Its Content
Telegram Founder: I Will Leave My Fortune to Over 100 of My Children
Political Turmoil Resurfaces in Belgium Amid Economic Concerns
Fed policymakers divided on timing of interest rate cuts
Trump signals imminent agreement with Harvard University
Inheritance tax referendum alarms Swiss billionaire community
Japan cancels bilateral security meeting amid US defence demands
AI skeptic Emily Bender warns that ‘the emperor has no clothes’
Israel Confirms Assassination of Quds Force Commander in Tehran
16 Billion Login Credentials Leaked in Unprecedented Cybersecurity Breach
Senate hearing on who was 'really running' Biden White House kicks off
Iranian Military Officers Reportedly Seek Contact with Reza Pahlavi, Signal Intent to Defect
FBI and Senate Investigate Allegations of Chinese Plot to Influence the 2020 Election in Biden’s Favor Using Fake U.S. Driver’s Licenses
Vietnam Emerges as Luxury Yacht Destination for Ultra‑Rich
Plans to Sell Dutch Embassy in Bangkok Face Local Opposition
China's Iranian Oil Imports Face Disruption Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions
Trump's $5 Million 'Trump Card' Visa Program Draws Nearly 70,000 Applicants
DGCA Finds No Major Safety Concerns in Air India's Boeing 787 Fleet
Airlines Reroute Flights Amid Expanding Middle East Conflict Zones
Elon Musk's xAI Seeks $9.3 Billion in Funding Amid AI Expansion
Trump Demands Iran's Unconditional Surrender Amid Escalating Conflict
Israeli Airstrike Targets Iranian State TV in Central Tehran
President Trump is leaving the G7 summit early and has ordered the National Security Council to the Situation Room
Taiwan Imposes Export Ban on Chips to Huawei and SMIC
Israel has just announced plans to strike Tehran again, and in response, Trump has urged people to evacuate
Netanyahu Signals Potential Regime Change in Iran
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
EU Proposes Ban on New Russian Gas Contracts
Analysts Warn Iran May Resort to Unconventional Warfare
Iranian Regime Faces Existential Threat Amid Conflict
×