Arab Press

بالشعب و للشعب
Tuesday, Aug 26, 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

Arab Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Trump Backs Putin’s Land-for-Peace Proposal Amid Kyiv’s Rejection
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
Iranian Protection Offers Chinese Vehicle Shipments a Cost Advantage over Japanese and Korean Makers
United States Sells Luxury Yacht Amadea, Valued at Approximately $325 Million, in First Sale of a Seized Russian Yacht Since the Invasion of Ukraine
Saudi Arabia accelerates renewables to curb domestic oil use
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez announce engagement
Asia-Pacific dominates world’s busiest flight routes, with South Korea’s Jeju–Seoul corridor leading global rankings
Private Welsh island with 19th-century fort listed for sale at over £3 million
Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival
Australia to Recognize the State of Palestine at UN Assembly
The Collapse of the Programmer Dream: AI Experts Now the Real High-Earners
Armenia and Azerbaijan to Sign US-Brokered Framework Agreement for Nakhchivan Corridor
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
Trump Deploys Nuclear Submarines After Threats from Former Russian President Medvedev
Germany’s Economic Breakdown and the Return of Militarization: From Industrial Collapse to a New Offensive Strategy
Germany Enters Fiscal Crisis as Cabinet Approves €174 Billion in New Debt
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
Kurdistan Workers Party Takes Symbolic Step Towards Peace in Northern Iraq
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
AI Raises Alarms Over Long-Term Job Security
Russia Formally Recognizes Taliban Government in Afghanistan
Saudi Arabia Maintains Ties with Iran Despite Israel Conflict
×