Google has announced that it will limit the types of election-related questions users can ask its Gemini chatbot, adding that it has already introduced changes in the United States and India, where voters will head to the polls this spring.
“Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun introducing limits on the types of election-related queries that Gemini responds to,” Google wrote in the article. blog post on tuesday. “We take seriously our responsibility to provide quality information in response to these types of inquiries and are continually working to improve our protections.”
A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the changes are in line with the company’s planned approach to elections.
“As we said last December, in preparation for the many elections that will take place around the world in 2024, we are limiting the types of election-related queries that Gemini responds to out of an abundance of caution.” the person in charge said.
The announcement comes after Google retired its artificial intelligence image generation tool last month following a series of controversies, including historical inaccuracies and controversial responses. The company had introduced an image generator through Gemini, Google’s main suite of AI models, in early February as part of a major rebranding.
“We’ve taken this feature offline while we fix the issue,” Google’s DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said during a panel discussion at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona last month. “We hope to have it back online soon in the coming weeks.” He added that the product “didn’t work as we intended.”
The news comes as tech platforms prepare for a huge election around the world that will affect more than 4 billion people in more than 40 countries. The rise in AI-generated content is raising serious concerns about election-related misinformation, with the number of deepfakes being generated up 900% year over year, according to data from machine learning company Clarity.
Election-related misinformation has been a major problem dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign. tried to introduce A cheap and easy way to spread inaccurate content across social platforms. Lawmakers are now even more concerned about the rapid rise of AI.
“There are serious concerns about how AI could be used in campaigns to mislead voters,” Democratic state senator Josh Becker of California said in an interview with CNBC last month. Told.
Detection and watermarking technologies used to identify deepfakes are not advancing fast enough to keep up. Even if the platforms behind AI-generated images and videos agree to imprint invisible watermarks and certain types of metadata, there are ways to circumvent these safeguards. In some cases, you can also fool the detector by taking a screenshot.
In recent months, Google has emphasized its commitment to pursuing and investing heavily in AI assistants, or agents. The term often refers to tools ranging from chatbots to coding assistants and other productivity tools.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted AI agents as a priority during the company’s earnings call on January 30th. Pichai said he hopes to eventually provide an AI agent that can perform an increasing number of tasks for users, including within Google search. “Many executions await us in the future,” he said. Similarly, CEOs of tech giants from Microsoft to Amazon have redoubled their efforts to build their AI agents as productivity tools.
Google’s Gemini rebrand, app rollout, and feature enhancements are the first steps toward “building a true AI assistant,” said Sissy Xiao, Google vice president and general manager of Google Assistant and Bard. He told reporters during a conference call in May.