The Google twins will steer clear of election talk

Google’s Gemini won’t answer questions about the 2024 election. Reuters reported on Tuesday that the company would block the AI ​​chatbot’s ability to generate answers for elections this year. The company said in December will limit the types of political issues the chatbot can discuss as the election nears.

“Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to place restrictions on the types of election-related inquiries that Gemini will return responses to,” the company wrote in a Google India blog post on Tuesday. “We take seriously our responsibility to provide high-quality information for these types of requests and are constantly working to improve our protections.”

The guardrails are already in place. When I asked Gemini about interesting facts about the 2024 US presidential election, he replied, “I’m still learning how to answer that question. In the meantime, try Google Search.” In addition to America’s Biden-Trump rematch (and down-ballot races that will determine control of Congress), India and South Africa will hold national elections this year.

When I prompted OpenAI’s ChatGPT with the same question, it provided a long list of facts. These include observations on the presidential rematch, early primaries and Super Tuesday, voter demographics and more.

OpenAI has outlined its plans to fight disinformation related to the January election. His strategy focuses more on preventing misinformation than providing none. His approach includes stricter guidelines for generating DALL-E 3 images, banning apps that discourage people from voting and preventing people from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or institutions.

It’s understandable why Google would err on the side of caution with its AI bot. Gemini drew heat from the company last month when social media users posted examples of the chatbot applying diversity filters to “historical images,” including portraying Nazis and America’s founding fathers as people of color. After a backlash (largely from the internet’s “anti-woke” brigade), he suspended Gemini’s ability to generate humans until he could iron out the kinks. Google hasn’t lifted that block yet, and now responds to image prompts for people with, “Sorry, we couldn’t generate the images you requested.”