Google Gemini product lead retreats from social media after troubled AI product launch led to harassment

Jack Krawczyk, a Google artificial intelligence product lead, has pulled away from social media sites, including X and LinkedIn, after the troubled launch of the company’s AI image generator made him the target of online harassment.

Krawczyk, who is typically active on social media, where he’s known to solicit user feedback and to praise Google products and colleagues, removed identifying information and made some accounts private. Krawczyk’s official title is senior director of product management for Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models.

Though he’s lowering his public profile, Krawczyk is still engaged in the work on Gemini products and has the same title, according to sources with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named in order to speak on the issue.

Earlier this month, Google launched an AI image generator through Gemini. The tool allowed users to enter prompts to create an image, similar to how text-based services such as ChatGPT produce sophisticated responses and answers from inquiries.

In the days following the release of the image engine, users discovered historical inaccuracies that went viral online. Google responded by pulling the feature last week, with plans to relaunch it in the coming weeks.

Just before the company removed the product, Krawczyk was the first Google leader to write on X, saying, “We are aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions, and we are working to fix this immediately.”

On Tuesday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to employees that called Gemini’s image generation issues “problematic,” and said they “have offended our users” and “showed bias,” adding that the situation was “completely unacceptable.”

By then, Krawczyk had taken much of the heat as reports resurfaced some of his old posts. Critics claimed, without evidence, that he had an “anti-white” agenda and included images of Krawczyk in their posts and responses. X CEO Elon Musk, who has frequently attacked Google’s business, amplified those voices on his platform, singling out Krawczyk.

Krawczyk has since removed images of himself as well as any identifying information from social media platforms.

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