Zoom’s Virtual Background Feature Isn’t Built for Black Faces

A scientist warns that bias in facial recognition software could lead to false arrests, lost job opportunities

Ainissa Ramirez says she’s seen Black and dark-skinned colleagues disappear into their virtual backgrounds on Zoom calls a few times this year. And she isn’t the only one.

“I have heard reports that Black people are fading into their Zoom backgrounds because supposedly the algorithms are not able to detect faces of dark complexions well,” Ramirez, PhD, former professor of mechanical engineering at Yale University, tells OneZero.

In late September, a PhD student in Canada tweeted about a Black professor whose head kept getting removed every time they tried to use a virtual background. The tweet went viral, with countless Black and dark-skinned people sharing their difficulties using Zoom’s virtual background function, which relies on facial recognition technology to determine what parts of the screen should show the user and what parts should show the background image.

Ramirez spoke about the intersection of emerging technologies and racial bias at the Toronto International Festival of Authors last Friday, pointing out how this issue of Black and dark-skinned people being excluded from new tech is anything but new.

She pointed to the way “bias was built into the formula” of film. From the 1940s until the early 1990s, film…