After facing major backlash over the new picture-tagging feature, Flickr is reportedly building an option to allow users to opt out of automated tagging.
The feature automatically organises pictures into more than 60 categories and makes the photos easy to search.
Several users took to Flickr’s forum to express their anger about the lack of option to opt-out of tagging and claimed that the tagging was being done incorrectly.
The auto-tagging and image-recognition feature combines to allow the image-storing platform to identify what is in a photo and it then automatically adds tags on behalf of the user.
The problem arose due to the use of an algorithmic system of tagging which is not accurate, and can only improve based on users’ corrections, reported Tech Crunch.
Flickr user adstads said: "For instance, when our technology recognizes patterns commonly found in car photos, it will label the image "car" and when it finds patterns commonly found in cat photos, it will label the image ‘cat’."
In some cases, the incorrect tagging went to the extreme as BMW cars were being tagged as a Ferrari and Auschwitz photos were being tagged as sports.
