Twitter will be changing the automated image cropping feature on their platform. The company first introduced the feature in 2018 to let the users highlight the salient areas of the image using the neural network algorithms to predict where someone is likely to look. The feature did bring out some really interesting results with the user’s photograph, with one being the AI cropping, which tends to pick lighter-skinned people, regardless of the original framing. The users did conduct many interesting experiments with the algorithm with images of humans, animals, cartoons, and a lot more.
The issue soon became popular and was tagged by some as a feature with racial or gender biases. However, Twitter did acknowledge the issue and confirmed that this is just a feature of the algorithm which will be tweaked in the future and is not based on any ground. The did acknowledge that the feature should have been launched after more tweaking and designing. The company is now making changes to the feature and have made clear that the image cropping will work on the principle of “what you see is what you get”. So the photo in Tweet composer is exactly what you will find in the Tweet.
The company has not yet confirmed as to when the update will be released or the issue will be, however, the company has acknowledged the issue and is working to fix it. The company has also apologized to people whom they might have unintentionally hurt and have assured that Twitter is fair and equal to all its users, no matter who they are or where they are from.