Google is making a push for "inclusive language" with a new writing feature that is designed to guide users away from words it considers politically incorrect.
Introduced this month, Google Docs users will encounter a pop-up warning if they type in words or phrases deemed noninclusive, such as "landlord," "mankind," "policeman," or "housewife," the New York Post reports.
Users will be informed that their word selections "may not be inclusive to all readers" and will be directed to more inclusive suggestions.
Called "assistive writing," the new feature is powered by artificial intelligence and has been slammed by critics for being meddlesome and self-righteous.
A Google spokesperson told the Post that its assisted writing feature is experiencing "ongoing evolution."
"Assisted writing uses language understanding models, which rely on millions of common phrases and sentences to automatically learn how people communicate," the representative said. "This also means they can reflect some human cognitive biases."
"Our technology is always improving, and we don’t yet (and may never) have a complete solution to identifying and mitigating all unwanted word associations and biases," they added.
When writers at Vice tried to type the words "annoyed" and "Motherboard" in the online word processor, they were flagged for not being inclusive enough, while racist comments about Black people from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke didn’t warrant any pop-up alerts.
Martin Luther King Jr’s well-known "I Have a Dream" speech did not pass muster in its entirety, with Google Docs recommending that the civil rights leader use the phrase "the intense urgency of now," instead of "the fierce urgency of now."
The program’s algorithm also had a problem with a phrase in President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, pointing out that "for all mankind" was not nearly as inclusive as the suggested "for all humankind."
And Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount should have talked about God’s "great," "marvelous," or "lovely" works, instead of "wonderful" works, according to Google’s AI feature.
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