Google Restricts Election-Related Content From Its AI Products

Google is implementing ‘new protections’ for its generative AI products into the election, announcing on Friday that it will extend its policies announced last December for its search and YouTube products.

The restrictions will include a lack of responses for a wide range of election-related queries, including candidates, voting processes, and election results, Axios reports.

Products affected include Search AI overlays, YouTube AI-generated summaries for Live Chat, Gems, and Gemini’s image generation.

“We’re taking a cautious approach because we want to get this right,” said the company.

Google says they’ve made the change due to ‘misinformation concerns’ – particularly around the election.

It’s essentially up to the industry to regulate uses of generative AI around elections, as Congress has yet to pass any bills and federal agencies look unlikely to take any meaningful action on AI in elections this year.
Most companies are adapting their existing election policies for their new AI experiences, including OpenAI. -Axios

So – with Google products nerf’d, let’s see how X’s Grok does with realtime election queries as we head into the home stretch. X has already updated Grok after reports that it was spreading election misinformation in regards to ballot deadlines in several states.

In response to queries, the AI assistant will now say “For accurate and up-to-date information about the 2024 US Elections, please visit Vote.gov.”

“We appreciate X’s action to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements that will ensure their users have access to accurate information from trusted sources in this critical election year,” said election officials from Minnesota, New Mexico, Michigan, Washington, and Pennsylvania in response to a complaint sent to Musk.

Of course, as Headline USA‘s Ben Sellers wrote this week, according to the Heritage Oversight Project, an election-integrity watchdog launched by prominent conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation, the deadline for removing Biden from the ballot has already long since passed in Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada.

This is big. It’s likely already too late to remove Joe Biden from the ballot.

WISCONSIN — It’s already too late to remove Joe Biden from the ballot.

NEVADA—After tonight, the fourth Friday in June, it will be too late to remove Joe Biden.

GEORGIA—Only a few weeks remain…

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 28, 2024

So Grok wasn’t spreading misinformation after all?