Not all publicity is good.

How many people will never again trust Google's AI because they know Google is eager to bias the results? Competitors are already pointing out that their models don't make those mistakes, so you should use them instead. Then there's the news about the original Gemini demo being faked too.

This seems more likely to kill the product than help it.

> How many people will never again trust Google's AI because they know Google is eager to bias the results?

Seems like hyperbole.

Probably literally no one is offended to the point that they will never trust google again by this.

People seem determined to believe that google will fail and want google to fail; and they may; but this won’t cause it.

It’ll just be a wave in the ocean.

People have short memories.

In 6 months no one will even care; there will some other new drama to complain about.

I haven't trusted google since finding out they've received seed money from InQtel. Puts all their crippling algorithm changes into perspective.

The real surprise is that anyone trusted google about anything in the first place.

Somebody I know trusted the google maps bicycle tour planning feature .. and had to stop a car after some unplanned hours in the australian outback sun.

Someone else who was directing me in a car via their mobile google maps told me to go through a blocked road. I said no, I cannot. "But you have to, google says so"

No, I still did not drive through a road block, despite google telling me, this is the way, but people trusted google a lot. And still do.

It’s not untrustworthy because it’s offensive, it’s offensive because it’s untrustworthy. If people think that Google is trying to rewrite history or hide “misinformation” or enforce censorship to appease actual or perceived powers, they’re going to go elsewhere.

> This seems more likely to kill the product than help it.

How many people will have visited Gemini the first time today just to try out the "biased image generator"?

There's a good chance some may stick.

The issue will be forgotten in a few days and then the next current thing comes.

Bad publicity might be good for upstarts with no brand to protect. But Google is no upstart and has a huge brand to protect.

The idea that “attention is all you need” here is a handwavy explanation that doesn’t hold up against basic scrutiny. Why would Google do something this embarrassing? What could they possibly stand to gain? Google has plenty of attention as it is. They have far more to lose. Not everything has to be a conspiracy.

My hot take is that the people designing this particular system didn't see a problem with deconstructing history.

> conspiracy.

Well, I guess this thread needed one more trigger label then.

Probably just hamfisted calculation. Backlash/embarrassment due to forced diversity and excluding white people from generated imagery < backlash from lack of diversity and (non-white) cultural insensitivity.