Google has apologised and admitted its new image recognition technology is flawed after it tagged two black Americans as “gorillas”.

The new photo app launched last month automatically tags uploaded images using its own image recognition software.

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Jacky Acliné of New York tweeted: “Google Photos, y’all f**ked up. my friend’s not a gorilla” on Sunday after a photo of him and a friend was mislabelled with the offensive tag.

Google’s chief architect of social Yonatan Zunger responded with, “Sheesh. High on my list of bugs you *never* want to see happen. Shudder”.

“Big thanks for helping us fix this: it makes a real difference,” he tweeted, followed by an admission there were problems with the technology.

He said issues could be caused by obscured faces or different skin tones and lighting.

“We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened,” a Google spokeswoman told the BBC.

“We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing.”

Google has removed the “gorilla” tag from the system.

Last month Flickr came under fire after it labelled black people with tags including “ape” and pictures of concentration camps as “sport”.