Google apologises for Baftas alert to ‘see more’ on racial slur

Google has apologised for sending a news alert on this year’s Bafta awards ceremony that suggested suggesting people read further into a racial slur.

The alert was for a story on the fallout from the ceremony, during which a member of the audience with Tourette’s syndrome used the slur in an involuntary tic when actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took to the stage.

A Google spokesperson told the BBC: “We’re deeply sorry for this mistake. We’ve removed the offensive notification and are working to prevent this from happening again.”

People on social media claimed the offensive language in the alert was due to Google’s use of generative AI, but the company said that was not the case.

Instead, Google’s “see more” suggestion using the racial slur stemmed from a failure within its safety features for push notifications, or alerts that come through as text on a user’s phone or device.

Google’s content system recognised the slur being used within many pieces of online content. It then used the term to characterise the content it was pushing out to users.

The company admitted the incident “shouldn’t have happened” and work was being done now to improve safety triggers and guardrails that should have stopped the language in Monday’s news alert.

Google News is one of the most downloaded news apps in the US.

However, the company said on Tuesday the offending notification would have only been seen by a small number of users and that it was removed quickly.

The use of the slur as part of a Google News alert was initially posted about on Instagram by online creator Danny Price, who on Monday expressed his outrage at the incident.

“What an interesting Black History month this has turned out to be,” he wrote. Black History month takes place in February in the US.

Racist language has been removed from the Baftas ceremony and leadership of the awards, have apologised for the racist language.