By To prevent any potential blunders in the application of the technology, Alphabet-owned Google announced on Tuesday that it will not be allowing its AI chatbot Gemini to respond to inquiries concerning the upcoming worldwide elections. The upgrade is released at a time when the public’s concerns about false information and fake news have been heightened by advances in generative AI, including the creation of images and videos, leading governments to regulate the technology.
When questioned about elections, such as the one that will take place in the United States in which Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face off for the presidency, Gemini says, “I’m still learning how to answer this question.” In the interim, utilize Google Search.” In December, Google announced limits in the United States, stating that they would take effect before 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 spokeswoman for the firm stated on Tuesday. In addition to the US, several sizable nations, including South Africa and India, the largest democracy in the world, will host national elections.
Before making “unreliable” or experimental AI tools available to the public, India has requested that tech companies obtain government approval and mark the tools as potentially incorrect. Google had to halt the chatbot’s ability to generate images late last month due to errors in certain historical person representations produced by Gemini, which has since brought criticism to its AI products.
The chatbot’s responses were deemed “biased” and “completely unacceptable” by CEO Sundar Pichai, who also stated that the business was trying to address such problems. Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said last month it will set up a team to tackle disinformation and the abuse of generative AI in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June.
