Behind Twitter’s Biased AI Cropping and How to Fix It

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:50:10 -0700

Note: this was first published 2020-28-09 on Medium; reposting here via PESOS.

Twitter’s AI crop has a bias. When given a large photo that contained the press photos of Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama, the AI picks Mitch. Swap the position of the two pictures, and the AI picks the white guy again. This behavior has led to a lot of random experimentation online. Still, it’s important to cover what we know, what Twitter’s response was, what caused the problem, and how to fix it.

VAR Killed the Football Star

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 08:44:53 -0700

The FIFA World Cup is in full swing and so are the various controversies. There’s a lot to discuss but I don’t want to get political, so let’s focus on the VAR or Video Assistant Referee. In the old days of football (by which I mean soccer to some of you), you did what you could get away with. If you snuck offsides a bit and the line referee didn’t see you, you’re good. If you get the ball over the goal line and the keeper circles it out as if they caught it and sent it back out, that’s fine if the referee didn’t call the goal. If you miss a header and punch it in with your fist, no problem. It all hinged on did a human referee see it and call it: not an algorithm, not a video replay.

Responsible AI on ayman's blog:

Behind Twitter’s Biased AI Cropping and How to Fix It

VAR Killed the Football Star