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 nan 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 narcotics for her and that nan narration progressive non-consensual acts.”

“None of this is true, not moreover nan run twelvemonth which was really 1998,” Blackburn wrote. While location are links to news articles that supposedly support these claims, she said, “The links lead to correction pages and unrelated news articles. There has ne'er been specified an accusation, location is nary specified individual, and location are nary specified news 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 rumor and Google is “working difficult to mitigate them.”

Blackburn’s missive based on that connected nan 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 celebrated chatbots to show a wide bias, and Trump moreover signed an executive bid banning “woke AI” earlier this year. Blackburn echoed those complaints successful her letter, penning that there’s “a accordant shape of bias against blimpish figures demonstrated by Google’s AI systems.”

That said, Blackburn hasn’t ever backed nan 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 reference nan specifics of Blackburn’s letter, but nan institution said it’s “seen reports of non-developers trying to usage Gemma successful AI Studio and inquire it actual questions.”

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

As a result, Google said it’s removing Gemma from AI Studio while continuing to make nan models disposable via API.