Social technology giant Facebook yesterday blocked the topic recommendation feature after mistakenly labeling a video of a black man as a 'primate animal' or ape through facial recognition software on the site, the Bangkok Post reported yesterday.

A Facebook spokesperson said the error was ‘unacceptable’ and informed that the recommendation software had been released.

"We apologize to anyone who has seen the offensive recommendation.

"We are blocking the entire topic recommendation feature so that we can investigate the cause and prevent similar things from happening again," Facebook said.

Face recognition software has been slammed by civil rights activists who say there are problems with its accuracy especially involving people of colour.

The video dated June 2020 was posted by MailOnline publication titled White men calls cops on black men at marina.

A screenshot of the recommendation was shared on social site Twitter by former Facebook content design manager Darci Groves.

This isn’t the first time AI’s have been accused of racism. In 2015, Google Photos came under fire and Google had to apologise after it labelled a photo of two Black people as gorillas. Google Photos has to go to the extent of censoring the word gorilla from its searches after users complained that their black friends were being labelled as gorillas.