The tech giant released a new color scale built to capture the range of human skin tones.
[Image: courtesy of Google]
Google announced a set of initiatives Wednesday aimed at creating a more equitable product experience for people across the skin-tone spectrum.
Google envisions that the scale can provide a standardized way for people in the tech industry to build and test products across the range of human skin tones, providing a uniform way to discuss which ranges of colors are or are not well served by a particular product.
“This really is about creating an industry conversation,” says Tulsee Doshi, head of product for responsible AI at Google.
“We’re trying to identify when queries are homogenous, so really only showing a small number of skin tones, and actually improving the diversity of the results,” she says.
The company is also rolling out new filters for Google Photos as part of its existing Real Tone system, which is designed to help generate high-quality photos for a wide array of skin tones.
Having a standardized skin tone scale will also help people within the company and, potentially, the industry quickly communicate about skin color-related issues, Doshi says. Google is also interested in developing ways that publishers can annotate content to indicate which skin tones are present where it’s relevant, similar to how recipe publishers can now add metadata useful to search engines and their users looking for cooking instructions with certain features, she says.
This article was written on May 11th, 2022 by Steven Melendez for FastCompany.com
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