Google apologizes after app mistakenly labels black people 'gorillas'

Google has come under fire after the image-recognition feature inits Photos applicationmistakenly identified people with dark skin as "gorillas."

Jacky Alcinof New York Citytweeted a picture of himself and a friend on Sunday that theapplicationlabelled as "gorillas,"a word that also hasracistconnotations.

In a followuptweet,Alcin, who works as aweb developer, said although he could understand how the error might have happened, he could not understand why.The tweet quickly prompted Yonatan Zunger,Google'schief architect of social, to issue an apology.

The tagging feature responsible for the mistake is relatively new and has been widelymocked online for other mistakes.

The appgradually refines categorizations as it receives more data, according to theVerge.

Google officials released a statement sayingthe company is "appalled and genuinely sorry" about the label.After attempting to fix the algorithm, Googledecided to temporarily removethe gorilla label, including the application's ability to search for gorillas, according to the New York Times.