PALO ALTO, CA—Responding to an outpouring of criticism across the tech industry, officials at software company Emergent AI confirmed Wednesday that they had fixed a bug causing their photo app to treat black users equally. “Unfortunately, we didn’t catch the glitch before several hundred users of color received the same treatment as white users, and for that we’re deeply sorry,” said company spokesman Steven Grant, who pinned the mistake on machine-learning techniques that allowed Emergent’s algorithm to develop defective abilities such as broad-mindedness and empathy for minorities. “This was a huge oversight on our part, due partly to the fact that the image database implemented to train the AI included an accurate representation of our country’s demographics. That’s wrong. It doesn’t align with our company’s values, and we pledge to do better to discriminate against a much larger chunk of our user base.” At press time, the company had reported further positive results after altering its database to include 19th-century physiognomy diagrams and writings from famous eugenicists.