In June 2020, a facial recognition algorithm led to the wrongful arrest of Robert Williams, an African-American, for a crime he did not commit. After a shoplifting incident in in a pricey area of Detroit, Michigan, his driver’s license photo was wrongly matched with a blurry video of the perpetrator. Police released him after several hours and apologised, but the episode raises serious questions about the accuracy of visual recognition algorithms. The troubling aspect of the story is that facial recognition algorithms have been shown to be less accurate for black faces than for white ones. But why do facial recognition algorithms make more mistakes for Blacks than whites, and what can be done about it?