Identity Crisis: Artificial Intelligence engines ignore black skin tones and African Hair texture
By Tehila Okagbue
Artificial Intelligence cannot read or decipher black people’s profiles well. Tech Safari has just revealed.
Africa makes up less than 2.5 percent of the global Artificial Intelligence market.
In 2024, only 2.9 percent of the photos that were used to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a major image dataset came from Africa.
This means that Black faces barely show up in the data that the algorithm copies.
So, when people in Africa try to recreate local pictures with AI, the outcomes usually don’t look very detailed.
And if AI or tech doesn’t recognise black hair, what else is it missing?
Nigerian writer Tehila Okagbue, whose work explores culture, identity, and Afro hair, unpacks what this means for Black representation in tech.
In case you’re wondering how she came to this conclusion, remember that …
There are around 70,000 AI companies worldwide
About 25 percent of those are in the United States.
At least 9.6 percent of AI firms are based in Europe
Africa has less than 4 percent AI companies.
But only a handful of these companies, like Google (DeepMind), OpenAI, and Meta, actually train their own models from scratch.
More than 54 percent of AI founders say they use original models like OpenAI’s GPT in their products, which means most of them are not building their own models.
They are layering apps on top of pre-existing models.
What about the base models?
They’re built in countries where Black engineers make up just 3 percent of the teams.
So if the original models don’t learn to see Black hair, then the apps built on top won’t either.
Now, if filters cannot get African (Afro) hair right, what else can’t Artificial Intelligence see?
It’s 2025, and AI tools aren’t just for selfies anymore.
They’re being used for everything—from professional headshots to job applications, Identity (ID) scans, and even border control.
And that’s just the beginning.
Artificial Intelligence will soon be a part of the screening process for everything.
So what does it mean if AI engines don’t work equally for everyone?When certain faces are misread or not seen at all?
Today, 76.5 percent of recruiters say they prefer AI-generated headshots over real ones.
But AI still makes 34 percent more errors on dark-skinned women than on light-skinned women.
And it has identified Black women wrongly up to 20 times more than white men at borders.
If the tech can’t see Africans properly, how can it choose black people fairly?
And yet, Black people are using these tools every day, just like everyone else.
So, if these users are here, and they’re this active, ignoring them comes with consequences.
Identity Crisis
And some of them could be missed job opportunities, where qualified candidates get filtered out before a human ever reviews their application.
There are also wrongful detentions or denials at borders, where misidentification can turn routine travel into a legal nightmare.
Exclusion from financial services, because automated ID‑scans will be denying loans, credit cards, or even bank accounts.
Erasure from social and creative platforms: Filters and effects that simply won’t work for Black features, driving users away.
Skewed data in health and policing: Facial‑analysis errors that feed into biased crime‑prediction and misdiagnosis, like delayed skin cancer detection on darker skin tones.
Who is even trying to fix the problem?
Google and Pinterest are starting to make search more inclusive.
And generative AI videos and photos are getting better at showing black hair, although it still comes off a bit polished.
But algorithms only follow instructions that come from people.
So, hiring more Black artists and developers is one way to help push for inclusive training data and culturally aware filter design.
The good news is, some people are already working on solutions:
Myavana uses AI to give people of colour specific hair care advice.
Parfait fits wigs to customers’ skin tones and head shapes through AI.
Gloria Oladipo, a breaking news reporter who covers tech and politics said algorithms that can show Black hair and Black characters in computer graphics are now being created, and that animators all over the world will soon get the results of this study.
And AI is here to stay
The global AI market is growing at 36 percent a year and will hit USD 244 billion by the end of 2025. This means there’s still time to fix the mistakes.
But more representation is necessary for this to happen, as black people make up about 7.4 percent of the tech workforce. And if the teams developing the tech don’t represent all the users, it will continue to show.
If not, trust starts to crack: When filters skip Black hair, ID tools get it wrong, and AI misses Black faces, they start to think these tools aren’t for them. And it can affect careers, everyday life, and overall trust in tech.
What does this mean?
AI is impressive, but for it to work well, it has to work for everyone.
Over 400 million filtered photos go up on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok every day.
AI features are everywhere now. People use them for selfies, brand shoots, and actors even use them in online auditions.
But AI might be leaving out an important part of these filters, and that’s afro hair.
Most of them don’t have a clue what to do with it.
Sometimes, they make it smoother and even go as far as making dark tones lighter.
Racial Machines: is tech trained not to recognize black hair?
In 2015, Snapchat set off the filter craze.
It introduced “Lenses”.
And anyone could add 3D modified elements to their camera.
Two years in, and they had built over 3,000 of these lenses for their 173 million users.
That same year, in 2017, Facebook joined the filter game on Instagram.
And today, most social media platforms have filters with AI in every snapshot:
TikTok has over 2,000 filters.
Users can choose from more than 4 million AR Lenses on Snapchat, made by over 375,000 Lens Creators.
And Instagram has 61 built-in photo filters and 13 video filters, plus over 1.2 million AR effects.
But more than half of these filters just don’t work well on darker skin tones, making them too smooth, too sparkly even.