Nasty hiccup for Flickr’s new tagging

This robot isn’t racist — but it does need to be educated.

That’s what photosharing site Flickr said after users complained that a new automated tagging system has given a slew of offensive labels to photos of people and places.

The Yahoo!owned site’s “image recognition technology,” rolled out May 7, identified a black man as an “ape” and an “animal,” although it also gave the “ape” designation to a blond white woman in facepaint.

Elsewhere, the metal bars outside Nazi concentration camp Dachau were labeled “jungle gym,” while the railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz were tagged “sport.”

In a statement, Flickr said it was preparing a fix for the inflammatory glitches. It noted that the robot algorithm learns from its mistakes as users delete faulty tags — all of which are generated by computers rather than people.

“While we are very proud of this advanced imagerecognition technology, we’re the first to admit there will be mistakes and we are constantly working to improve the experience,” a Flickr spokesman said.

Flickr had anticipated problems when it announced the new feature earlier this month — albeit not the kind that would offend and outrage users.

“Usually, you can tell why a mistake was made (sometimes a bike looks like a motorcycle), but occasionally, it may be baffling (no, your grandma doesn’t look like a cat!)” Flickr employee Andrew Stadlen wrote.

The Flickr fracas follows revelations earlier this week that the White House turned up in Google Maps searches of the word “house” coupled with the nword.