Google is preventing AI chatbot Gemini from answering questions about the global elections scheduled for this year, the Alphabet-owned company announced on Tuesday, to minimize potential mistakes in the technology’s implementation.
The update comes at a time when advances in generative AI, such as picture and video generation, have heightened public concerns about misinformation and fake news, forcing governments to regulate the technology.
When asked about elections, such as the approaching U.S. presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Gemini says, “I’m still learning how to address this topic. In the meantime, use Google Search.
Google announced limits in the United States in December, stating that they would go into force ahead of the election.
“In preparation for the many elections happening around the world in 2024 and out of an abundance of caution, we are restricting the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses,” a company spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Aside from the United States, national elections will be held in other large countries, including South Africa and India, the world’s largest democracy.
India has urged tech companies to get government approval before publicly releasing “unreliable” or under-trial AI products, as well as to flag them for the possibility of returning incorrect results.
Google’s AI products are being scrutinized after flaws in some historical images of people made by Gemini caused the company to halt the chatbot’s image-generation capability late last month.
CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the business was working to resolve the flaws and that the chatbot’s responses were “biased” and “completely unacceptable”.
Last month, Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, announced the launch of a team to combat disinformation and the abuse of generative AI in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June.