Google AI Search Refuses To Say Who Won The 2020 Election
It's either massive quality control incompetence or the coddling of fascism, neither of which are a great look.
Last month the Trump administration launched America.gov, an AI-assisted chatbot that unsurprisingly injects a lot of partisan agitprop into its responses on behalf of our dogshit authoritarian government.
While America.gov (which uses both Elon Musk's Grok and Google's Gemini) struggles to correctly inform the public about the January 6th insurrection, it does, at least, contradict the President and correctly state who won the 2020 election:
The same can't be said for Google's AI-assisted search engine, which users this week noted refused to give users a clear answer:
It doesn't have the same problem answering questions about the 2016, 2024, or any other election, suggesting this was an active choice. It doesn't happen for users outside of the United States. And if you directly use Google Gemini, it gives you the correct result. As I was writing this, Google seems to have fixed the problem:
Though others tell me they're still getting the "error."
Back during the 2024 election season, both Google (Gemini) and Microsoft (CoPilot) AI chatbots were criticized for similarly being unable of clearly stating who won the 2020 election. So this isn't really new. And while AI fucks up a lot, getting this basic fact right shouldn't be any sort of meaningful challenge.
Meanwhile, if you ask Google-Gemini enabled search who will win the 2028 Presidential election, it recommends consulting not respected authorities – but online gambling markets like Kalshi and Polymarket (it also pummels you with ads for both markets when users search for information on senate races).
Like so many tech giants, Google is so eager to try and dominate AI engagement and adoption at unimaginable new scale, it has clearly stopped caring about quality control, ethics, democracy, or a properly-informed electorate. The evidence is everywhere, especially if you're a user of products like Google News.
Back in June, you might recall that people could plug words like "disregard" or "skip" into Google search and the engine would confuse search queries with AI commands, something that should have been discovered with rudimentary testing.
Alphabet/Google is a company with 190,820 employees and a $4.40 trillion market cap. The ethics of coddling fascism and funny financial math of AI aside, that this stuff isn't being competently tested before launch is utterly clownish.
It remains possible that Google Search AI mode's inability to determine the winner of the 2020 election was some sort of unauthorized fuck up. I'm sure that Google will respond with some denial later today.
But there's ample evidence that company leadership are feckless, authoritarian-simping cowards all the same (see the recent decision to not only rename Lake Ontario, but to do so before the Trump administration had even updated US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) data).
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, like most major tech executives, has endlessly fawned over Trump and kissed the ring at every conceivable opportunity, regardless of Trump's impact on human lives, civil rights, or foundational democracy. These men are embarrassing cowards, and it should never be forgotten.
Amusingly, Pichai at least purportedly balked at Trump's attempt to rename the Pacific Ocean, at least according to the serial liar himself:
President Donald Trump said he called Google’s Sundar Pichai to discuss renaming the Atlantic Ocean, but would “probably pass” after the chief executive told him: “Please don’t ask us to do that.”
Trump, who controversially renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, floated the idea at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday evening, saying: “We have a lake and we have a gulf, now we need a river and we need an ocean.”
He said he “called Google Maps, who were really great,” with the previous name changes, and asked Pichai if Google could “handle” a name change for the Atlantic.
Trump said Pichai responded: “No, no, no. This time, I’m not doing it,” and “Oceans are different, Sir,” as they border “a lot of countries.”
So brave.
Needless to say, social media users weren't particularly impressed by Google's decision to coddle the President's anti-democratic delusions when it comes to the 2020 election:
The AI enshittification of all knowledge and search is occurring simultaneously with the disintegration of quality journalism (especially local). There are a lot of folks doing some very important and amazing work trying to change that, but they're swimming upstream in a country being devoured by badly-automated hyper-enshittification and propaganda at impossible new scale.
I suspect as Trump's health and political power continue to sag, corporations will increasingly start to show something vaguely resembling a backbone (see: ABC suing the Trump FCC for massive First Amendment violations). But they'll also be desperate to try and pretend their dangerous complicity never happened.
If we're to avoid an authoritarian repeat, I recommend that you refuse to let them.