Google halts Gemini's ability to generate images after criticism

Google announced Thursday it is temporarily suspending its artificial intelligence (AI) model Gemini's ability to generate images after receiving criticism on social media platforms.

The US-based tech company faced criticism after the AI chatbot created historically inaccurate images, which showed people of color in place of white people.

Other historically inaccurate generated images included Black Vikings, women hockey players in the men's professional National Hockey League, and non-white US founding fathers, according to social media posts.

"We're already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation feature. While we do this, we're going to pause the image generation of people and will re-release an improved version soon," Google Communications wrote on X.

The suspension comes one day after Google said it was "aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions."

"We're working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. Gemini's AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that's generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it's missing the mark here," the company wrote on X late Wednesday.

Gemini, formerly known as Bard, started offering text-to-image generative features earlier this month.