Mindtech’s Synthetic Data Platform Introduces Monk Skin Tone Scale to Reduce Bias in AI Applications

** Mindtech updates its Chameleon platform to include selection by Monk Skin Tone Scale for easier quantification of datasets across industry data sources **

SHEFFIELD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mindtech Global, developer of the world’s leading platform for the creation of synthetic data for training AI, now offers full support of Monk Skin Tone (MST) Scale, to create, characterize and label the platform’s data output.

The MST Scale, was developed by Harvard Professor Dr Ellis Monk, in conjunction with Google. Launched earlier this month, the MST Scale has a scale of 10 hues, and has been designed to help AI applications address the real-world variations in skin tone. No single hue is representative of an individual’s given skin tone which varies person to person and across the body, as well as being dependent on lighting conditions. It does however provide a base coverage that helps ensure balanced representation of skin tones, more so than the conventional 6 tone Fitzpatrick scale.

Mindtech’s Chameleon platform enables AI developers to create unlimited synthetic data for training AI systems to better understand and predict how humans interact with each other and the world around them. Avoiding bias in training datasets requires the inclusion of a wide diversity of potential synthetic actors, demonstrating a range of ages, body shapes, body mass index (BMI), clothing and skin tones.

With Chameleon’s new update, customers can automatically generate millions of synthetic actors, ensuring diversity by selecting skin tone values according to the MST Scale. This allows custom training datasets to be created that offer an equal balance across the scale or used to eliminate bias in existing real-world datasets where diversity is lacking. Customers can also license ‘off-the-shelf’ data packs that can be customized to include the required diversity of synthetic actors using the MST Scale.

To watch a video of the Chameleon platform with its MST Scale feature in action, click here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/chameleon-monkskintone

Chris Longstaff, Mindtech’s VP Product Management said, “A founding principle of Mindtech is that AI development should be inclusive and open to all, and we empower that through provision of diverse, privacy-compliant synthetic data. The introduction by Google and other industry partners of the Monk Skin Tone Scale is a welcome step-forward in industry standardisation for descriptions of skin tones, and by incorporating it into our Chameleon platform, we are helping customers create bias-free AI applications.”

Chameleon 22.1 is available for immediate licensing.

Mindtech Global www.mindtech.global

Mindtech Global is the developer of the world’s leading end-to-end ‘synthetic’ data creation platform for the training of AI vision systems. The company’s Chameleon platform is a step change in the way AI vision systems are trained, helping computers understand and predict human interactions in applications ranging across retail, smart home, healthcare and smart city.

Mindtech is headquartered in the UK, with operations across the US and Far East and is funded by investors including Mercia, Deeptech Labs, In-Q-Tel and Appen.