Google will adapt its search engine to the skin color of Internet users

The company presented a palette of ten skin tones that will allow better representation of search results, especially on Google Images.

On the occasion of its 2022 annual conference, Google presented its latest projects and products to be released. Among these, the company announced a new tool to strengthen the representativeness of different skin colors on the web.

More precisely, it is a new spectrum of ten skin colors, created in partnership with the doctor and sociologist Ellis Monk. This tool is called the Monk Skin Tone Scale, repository of Monk skin colors, in English.

This palette will allow, for example, artificial intelligence to better recognize faces, regardless of their skin tone. Algorithms, from Google or other tech giants, are regularly criticized for their ignorance of black skins, opening the door to discrimination bias.

These tools generally have difficulty recognizing or identifying people with darker skin. Several companies have also become aware of this in recent years, and announced improvement projects.

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