The feature, called AI Face, supposedly allows users to “know what you would look like if you were born on a different continent,” according to the Gradient website.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The feature was promoted on Wednesday by television personalities Scott Disick and Brody Jenner – known for their appearances on the reality show “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” – and they posted changing photos on Twitter showing what they would look like in “Europe”, “Asia”, “India” and “Africa” . (Some users have also indicated that India is part of Asia.) Disick also posted a similar picture on his Instagram account, but disabled the comments.
Several users expressed anger in response to the tweets, describing them as:
Racist“And
condemn Promote them to
Black face“.
Both Disick and Jenner subsequently deleted their posts. Representatives of Disick and Jenner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Disick and members of the Kardashian family previously posted posts on social media regarding Gradient indicating they were advertisements, according to The Sun. There is no such indicator in Wednesday’s posts.
Gradient describes itself as “the next big thing in the mobile photo editing world,” and it is named after its founders Vladislav Orazov and Bogdan Matviv, whom the website describes as “artificial intelligence and machine learning hobbyists”.
Other features in the app allow users to test which celebs they look like, what animal they look like, and transform themselves into selfies. The app is also promoting a feature called “Ethnicity Estimate,” which aims to use artificial intelligence to analyze someone’s image and account for their ancestors.
“Simply upload your photo, and our highly accurate algorithm will analyze your facial features and tell your ethnic background,” the website says.
This is not the first time that the Gradient has faced controversy. Several questions were raised last year about the privacy policy for user photos and its tendency to charge users for subscriptions without their explicit consent, according to a report by Mashable.
The company’s celebrity-like feature came to light last year after several high-profile shouts, including from Disick and members of the Kardashians. Kim kardashian
chirp About the “Ethnicity Rating” feature was released in April of this year, with a hashtag indicating it’s an ad.
