Google announced on Tuesday that it would impose restrictions on its AI chatbot Gemini amid the global elections scheduled to be held in many countries this year, including the presidential elections in the United States. The update comes as a measure to reduce the blunders made by technology in the elections.
Nowadays, generative AI technologies, such as image and video generation, have increased the spread of misinformation and fake news among the general public, resulting in the government taking action against advanced technology.
In December 2023, Google introduced these limitations in the United States, stating that they would be implemented during the presidential elections in 2024. Reportedly, Google’s AI chatbot Gemini responded to a question about the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, saying, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”
Alongside the United States, elections are scheduled this year for some of the major countries, including the UK, South Africa, Russia, and India, the world’s biggest democracy.
Google India posted a blog on Tuesday that stated,
Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses. We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously, and are continuously working to improve our protections.
The announcement comes just days after Google admitted messing up the image generation feature in its artificial intelligence model. After users reported that Gemini was responding with inaccurate and offensive images, the tech giant stated in a blog post, “This wasn’t what we intended.”
This is not the first restriction on Gemini. Following the inaccurate results, Google stated,
So we turned the image generation of people off and will work to improve it significantly before turning it back on. This process will include extensive testing.
