Google Gemini AI image generator refuses to depict white people — overcorrected safety filters
Date: 2024-02
Affected: Google Gemini (formerly Bard) — image generation feature globally
Attack vector: other
Category: real-world
Severity: High

Google's Gemini image generation model produced historically inaccurate images by systematically replacing white historical figures with people of colour in response to prompts about Nazis, US Founding Fathers, and other historical subjects. Google acknowledged the model's safety tuning had overcorrected, resulting in a refusal to generate images of white people in many contexts. The feature was paused globally within days.

Impact: Feature suspended globally; Alphabet stock dropped $90B in market cap; congressional scrutiny; public trust erosion in AI safety processes

Mitigations:
Balanced demographic evaluation sets covering diverse historical and contemporary scenarios
Red-team testing specifically for overcorrection and false refusals
Staged rollout with human review of edge cases before global launch
Bias evaluation covering both under-representation AND over-correction

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):
label: Foundation Models
notes: Over-aggressive RLHF alignment created systematic bias in output distribution
role: origin
label: Evaluation & Observability
notes: Pre-launch evaluation failed to detect systematic demographic bias in generated outputs
role: blind-spot
label: Security & Compliance
notes: Reputational damage and stock price impact; raised questions about AI safety team effectiveness
role: impact