Approaching seriously for a sec: this "race filter" tool's algorithms sounded reasonable from the snippets discussed earlier, and the output did not appear to strongly favor any particular one of the race presets from what I could see in the results posted here. Yes, it is inherently stereotyping and reductive on some levels, and obviously imperfect...but it is all of those things pretty neutrally across each of its race presets, so...not racist. I don't know what the internal development motives were, if any, beyond "make another iterative cool face toy," but regardless of intent I think this one had some cultural side merit, too, beyond the elaborate casual gimmick.
There's an important perceptual interface here between the "you" you're uploading to the app and the reinterpreted racial flavors of you it sends back. Crucially, the tech seems good enough that you can still discern yourself there in each of the results despite the sometimes dramatic transformations.
Basically it was all just a gimmick for fun, sure, and outrage of dubious merit won this one handily since the devs didn't seem fond of the outlook across the 24 hours or so, but thanks to the elaborate tech behind it It was also handing you a pretty potent visual aid for nudging some folks toward a bit of common ground with their fellow human being even when superficially disparate, and that can go a long way toward demonstrating how arbitrary the concept of (and toxic cultural emphasis still placed on) racial identity/labeling is by testing it directly against your fundamental sense of self (or subverting your perception of a public figure similarly), which this gimmick app happened to tackle as a byproduct of how well the gimmick feature was implemented. Continuing to see "you" in the interpretations no matter the race disparity haaaas to present an opportunity to open some minds. It's a lot easier to relate to someone when the first someone can essentially be you acting as an intermediary proxy -- in the form of sci-fi neural net photoshops of you pretty convincingly passing as part of a group you might have harbored biases against/toward, had problems identifying with or humanizing or overcoming disingenuous pervasive cultural talking points, etc. etc.
Some potential doors to empathy there? Could lead to some folks eye to eye with the uncomfortable reality of seeing themselves re-imagined as someone they'd default to immediate racism towards, and then on occasion maybe step back and try to reconcile their own behaviors and motives after confronting the cognitive dissonance? Maybe.
It'd also be pretty neat on its own to see your results when you have a diverse background/family since you don't always inherit the same features and skin tone as your siblings or other close relatives, and it can be hard to visualize a different genetic dice roll sans convenient neural net designed for such purposes. Impressive tech; not racist (thought I'm sure some used it to that end on Shitty Internet); definitely not blackface, regardless. If they had the resources to do so, some additional race presets to diversify the number of outcomes per source image and better cover the initial release's underrepresented regional/ethnic groups would've helped, but that wasn't the main source of the overwhelming outrage it seems (accusations of blackface and demands to immediately pull it, it looks like?) so I guess this is just toast, then. Oh well.
