NEW YORK — Google is apologizing after reports surfaced that an automatic image-recognition feature in its Photos application was identifying images of some black people as “gorillas.”

A New York man posted a picture of himself and a female friend on Twitter earlier this week, showing that the Google image software had tagged both of them as “gorillas,” which is sometimes used as a racial slur.

Google says it’s “appalled and genuinely sorry” for what happened with the image-recognition feature. The company says it will take immediate action to stop those kinds of results from appearing again.