In a controversial incident, DBrand, a Canadian tech accessory company known for its social media persona, faced severe backlash after making a racist remark about a customer’s last name. A Joke Taken Too Far? The comment, which was intended to be humorous, was directed at Bhuwan Chitransh, a customer who had complained about the discoloration of a product he had purchased. Chitransh’s initial tweet to DBrand was about a computer skin that changed color only two months after purchase. In a response that was seen as offensive, DBrand tweeted, “Your
Richualist founder Dawn Myers has secured investment from business figures Mark Cuban and Emma Grede on Shark Tank for her hair tool for textured hair. The washday styling tool Myers’ product, The Mint, is designed to detangle, condition, and style curly to coily hair types (classified as 3A to 4C). The hair tool includes six attachments and is designed to simplify and enhance styling. The technology used heats liquid hair products to optimize their effectiveness, addressing the often complicated and time-consuming nature of managing highly textured hair. “You simply load your pod; think
American Screening, a drug and medical testing supplies distributor in Louisana, has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The case centered around Imani Jackson, a Black employee who was fired after she decided to wear her natural hair to work. Fired over her wearing natural hair Imani Jackson’s daily routine involved spending 45 minutes each morning concealing her natural hair under a cap and gluing on a wig with straight hair. This routine wasn’t just time-consuming; it
Afro Unicorn has announced its expansion into immersive gaming platform Roblox. Founded in 2019 by April Showers, Afro Unicorn is a brand designed to represent the uniqueness of women and children of color in a truly diverse and inclusive fashion. “Bringing Afro Unicorn to Roblox is a momentous occasion to positively impact a new generation of youth, including digital trendsetters and innovators,” said Showers in a press release. Creating Afro Unicorn Showers’ journey to creating Afro Unicorn was sparked by a desire to see more inclusive representations of beauty and empowerment.Â
Last week, Grammy-nominated artist Bryson Tiller released his self-titled fourth studio album, his first LP in four years. However, fans may have to wait even longer for his next release as the 31-year-old plans to take a hiatus from music to focus on video game design. From music to game design In an interview with Complex, Tiller shared he would be taking hiatus from music to focus on his passion for video game design. “I would love for this [album] to be the last one for a while,” Tiller shared.
Nearly 60% of Black small- and mid-sized business (SMB) owners on TikTok say that the app is critical to their business’ existence, a new Oxford Economics report has found. TikTok’s Value For Small businesses Oxford Economics, in collaboration with TikTok, sought to understand the app’s economic value for local communities across the US. It surveyed 1,050 SMBs and 7,500 users in 2023 to gauge interactions and benefits derived from the app. Small and medium businesses generated $14.7 billion in revenues and supported 224,000 jobs on TikTok supported 224,000 jobs, the
The type of advice AI chatbots give people varies based on whether they have Black-sounding names, researchers at Stanford Law School have found. The researchers discovered that chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google AI’s PaLM-2 showed biases based on race and gender when giving advice in a range of scenarios. Chatbots: Biased Advisors? The study “What’s in a Name?” revealed that AI chatbots give less favorable advice to people with names that are typically associated with Black people or women compared to their counterparts. This bias spans across various scenarios such as job
Meta’s AI-powered image generator has recently been scrutinized for its difficulty in generating images of interracial couples and friends. Meta’s AI Fails To Generate Interracial Couples The AI tool, introduced in December, revealed its shortcomings when CNN tested its ability to create pictures of people from different racial backgrounds. The requests for images of interracial relationships consistently resulted in the AI producing images of same-race couples or friends, contradicting the diversity seen in real-world relationships. For instance, a request for a Black woman with a white husband yielded images of Black couples. This pattern was broken
A recent study has revealed that Black patients may be less likely than their white counterparts to receive responses from doctors to their online queries. The study in JAMA Network Open is based on examining medical advice request messages sent in 2021 to Boston Medical Center, a major safety-net provider. As the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with substantial growth in patient portal messaging, the researchers scrutinized over 39,000 messages from primary care patients during this time. Black Patients Less Likely To Get A Response Of the patients included in the sample, 2006 were Asian, 21600
AI’s inability to detect signs of depression in social media posts by Black Americans was revealed in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This disparity raises concerns about the implications of using AI in healthcare, especially when these models lack data from diverse racial and ethnic groups. The Study The study, conducted by researchers from Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and its School of Engineering and Applied Science, employed an “off the shelf” AI tool to analyze language in posts from 868 volunteers. These participants, comprising equal
