Google had a bit of trouble with its Gemini chatbot this week, temporarily shutting down Gemini's ability to generate human images

This is a significant limitation set on the AI chatbot, formerly known as Google Bard, after multiple reports surfaced this week that Gemini users were unhappy with the images of people generated by the chatbot

Their complaints? Apparently, when asked for pictures of historical figures like Nazi soldiers or America's founding fathers, Google Gemini generates them As you can imagine, some folks on the Internet took offense to this

On Wednesday (February 21), Gemini generated photos began circulating on social media of Nazi soldiers during World War II with darker skin tones and of America's Founding Fathers with skin tones far more diverse than history would suggest Shortly thereafter, Google issued an apology (via X's Google Communications account), acknowledging the problem and stating that it was "working to immediately remedy this type of depiction"

The task was not easy, however, as the problem was not immediately resolved The next day (today, February 22), Google temporarily shut down Gemini's ability to generate human images

In a follow-up post to X, Google's Comms team reiterated that engineers were working on the issue and that they had "suspended human image generation and plan to re-release an improved version soon"

No word on when that will be; several staff members at Tom's Guide have attempted to use Gemini to generate human images, but so far it has not worked When I asked Gemini to generate an image of a Black Viking, it refused

"We are working on improvements to allow Gemini to generate human images We hope to have this feature back in the near future and will let you know in a release update when that happens"

No word on when that will be We have contacted Google directly and will update this article if we learn any relevant details