Melanie Perkins, the co-founder and CEO of the design platform Canva, has pledged to donate 80% of her wealth to charitable causes. Perkins’ journey from selling handmade scarves at 14 to building a multi-billion dollar company is an inspiring story of entrepreneurial spirit and philanthropy.
A TikTok user has accused Canva’s AI of racism after it allegedly only produced images of Black boys when asked for kids in ankle monitors. The user, Bellanoche, posted a video on TikTok that has since gone viral, with over 728,100 views and 127,500 likes. In the video, Bellanoche says that she used Canva’s software to generate images of “an ankle monitor on a juvenile defendant.” However, she says that after trying several versions of the search, the AI only generated images of boys from one race.
“”Every time, it’s giving me images of little Black boys,”” she alleged.
Bellanoche claims that she believes AI is often racist, but she was surprised by how her experience with Canva’s AI. “I’ve now been shot out 12 different images that are only Black kids, and I have not described or asked for a Black child,” she said.
Examples of the images were shown in the clip. ”
“You wonder then why little Black boys are f*cking demonized, why they are shot down by their white counterparts,” she continued. ”
“It’s because they are villainized from a very young age.”
She concluded her video by asking Canva to explain its algorithm. A number of experts have expressed concern over racist tech and algorithms in the past. This is not the first time AI image-generating software has been accused of racism. Right-wingers have accused Google’s of refusing to acknowledge the existence of white people. One disability advocate said AI was racist after he asked for generated photos of “”, and the vast majority of the images rendered were of white men.
