Twitter said on Sunday that it would do an investigation on whether the neural network favors showing white people's face over Black people.

The said neural network is responsible for selecting which part of an image to show in a photo preview.

The issue started over the weekend when Twitter users posted several examples of how Twitter's preview of the photo in the timeline more frequently displayed the white person.

The examples posted feature an image of a Black person and a photo of a white person.

The public's test got Twitter's attention, and now the company is taking action.

"Our team did test for bias before shipping the model and did not find evidence of racial or gender bias in our testing. But it's clear from these examples that we've got more analysis to do. We're looking into this and will continue to share what we learn and what actions we take," Liz Kelly, a member of the Twitter communications team, was quoted in a report.

Twitter's Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis and Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal also said they are investigating the neural network.

The racial bias discussion started when one Twitter user started posting about racial bias on Zoom's facial detection.

The Twitter user noticed that the side-by-side image of him, a white man, and his Black colleague repeatedly showed his face in previews.

Reports said that Twitter users should view the analyses with a grain of salt.

Mashable said that to assess bias, researchers need a large sample size with multiple examples under various circumstances.

Twitter published in 2019 a blog post that explained how it used a neural network to make photo previews decisions.

One of the factors that cause the system to select a part of an image is higher contrast levels.

This could account for why the system appears to favor white faces.

The decision to use contrast as a determining factor might not be intentionally racist.

However, more often displaying white faces compared to Black faces is a biased result.

Two weeks ago, the company received a backlashing after testing a new feature that lets users share audio clips with tweets.

Critics said the company did not include accessibility tools like closed captioning.

Twitter said it heard the criticisms and recognizes that it needs to do better.

"We know we need to do more to make our service accessible, and we will," Twitter was quoted in a report.

Twitter is launching two new teams: the Accessibility Center of Excellence and the Experience Accessibility Team.

ACE will be responsible for making aspects of twitter, from office spaces to marketing and legal and policy standards, more accessible.

Meanwhile, EAT will work to make new existing products and features more accessible.

Currently, Twitter is working on adding automated captions to audio and video by early 2021.

The company said serving the public conversation means continuously taking steps to make Twitter accessible.

"from what we build to the internal programs and policies we implement globally - and this must include people with disabilities," Twitter was quoted.

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