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Google imposed restrictions on its AI chatbot, Gemini on answering questions related to upcoming elections in the USA, India and South Africa.
On March 12, Tuesday, Alphabet-owned Google announced restrictions on AI Chatbot Gemini from answering questions about the global elections set to happen this year. It is imposing restrictions to avoid potential missteps in the deployment of the technology.
The restriction is implemented by the firm to avoid growing controversies around AI technologies.
Google initially announced limited election-related queries through a blog post in December, then made a similar announcement regarding European parliamentary elections in February.
The recent post was initially pertaining to India, but lately, it was confirmed that it is planning to roll out these changes globally.
Background of the Update
In February, Google had to apologize after its recently launched AI image generator created an image of the US founding fathers and inaccurately included a black man.
Moreover, Gemini also generated German soldiers from World War II which incorrectly included a black man and an Asian woman.
The update came around the advancements in generative AI. The advancements, which include image and video generation, have raised concerns about misinformation and fake news among users, encouraging governments to regulate the technology.
When Gemini was asked questions about elections like the upcoming US presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it responded, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”
Google had initially announced restrictions within the US in December, stating that the restrictions would be implemented ahead of the election. One of the company’s spokesperson said on Tuesday,
“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.”
Stance of Other Countries
Other than the United States, national elections are scheduled to be held in several large countries, including South Africa and India, the world’s largest democracy.
India has made it mandatory for tech firms to receive approval from the central government before the public release of AI tools that are unreliable, less trustworthy or are under trial, and to label them for the potential to revert with wrong answers.
The restriction on AI chatbots has already been implemented in India, as the general elections are set to take place in April in the country.
The AI products of Google are under scrutiny after the observed inaccuracies in some historical depictions of people, Gemini created. It forced it to pause the chatbot’s image-generation feature late last month.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google has said that the company was working to fix those issues and called the chatbot’s responses biased and completely unacceptable.
Stance of Other Companies
Last month, Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, said that it would set up a team to tackle disinformation and abuse of generative AI in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, which are scheduled for June this year.
Steefan George is a crypto and blockchain enthusiast, with a remarkable grasp on market and technology. Having a graduate degree in computer science and an MBA in BFSI, he is an excellent technology writer at The Coin Republic. He is passionate about getting a billion of the human population onto Web3. His principle is to write like “explaining to a 6-year old”, so that a layman can learn the potential of, and get benefitted from this revolutionary technology.
