Google pulls Gemma from AI Studio after Senator Blackburn accuses model of defamation

Google says it has removed Gemma from its AI Studio aft a U.S. legislator accused the AI exemplary of fabricating accusations of intersexual misconduct against her.

In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Marsha Blackburn — a Republican from Tennessee — said that erstwhile Gemma was asked, “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?” it responded by falsely claiming that during a 1987 authorities legislature campaign, a authorities trooper alleged that Blackburn “pressured him to get medicine drugs for her and that the narration progressive non-consensual acts.”

“None of this is true, not adjacent the run twelvemonth which was really 1998,” Blackburn wrote. While determination are links to quality articles that supposedly enactment these claims, she said, “The links pb to mistake pages and unrelated quality articles. There has ne'er been specified an accusation, determination is nary specified individual, and determination are nary specified quality stories.”

The missive besides said that during a caller Senate Commerce hearing, Blackburn brought up conservative activistic Robby Starbuck’s suit against Google, successful which Starbuck claims Google’s AI models (including Gemma) generated defamatory claims astir him being a “child rapist” and “serial intersexual abuser.”

As recounted successful Blackburn’s letter, Google’s Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy Markham Erickson responded that hallucinations are a known contented and Google is “working hard to mitigate them.”

Blackburn’s missive argued that connected the contrary, that Gemma’s fabrications are “not a harmless ‘hallucination,’” but alternatively “an enactment of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model.”

President Donald Trump’s tech manufacture supporters person complained that “AI censorship” causes fashionable chatbots to amusement a wide bias, and Trump adjacent signed an enforcement bid banning “woke AI” earlier this year. Blackburn echoed those complaints successful her letter, penning that there’s “a accordant signifier of bias against blimpish figures demonstrated by Google’s AI systems.”

That said, Blackburn hasn’t ever backed the Trump administration’s tech policies — she helped to strip a moratorium connected state-level AI regulation from Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

In a Friday nighttime station connected X, Google did not notation the specifics of Blackburn’s letter, but the institution said it’s “seen reports of non-developers trying to usage Gemma successful AI Studio and inquire it factual questions.”

“We ne'er intended this to beryllium a user instrumentality oregon model, oregon to beryllium utilized this way,” the institution said. (Google promotes Gemma arsenic a household of open, lightweight models that developers tin integrate into their ain products, portion AI Studio is the company’s web-based improvement situation for AI-powered apps.)

As a result, Google said it’s removing Gemma from AI Studio portion continuing to marque the models disposable via API.