Billionaire Elon Musk on Sunday claimed that Google has a “search ban” on former President Donald Trump, posting to his social media service X an image of a search box with the words “President Donald” typed into it. Below the box, autocomplete suggested “Donald Duck” and “President Donald Regan” as potential search terms, but not “President Donald Trump.”
Google told CBS MoneyWatch the issue is due to “anomalies” that are causing autocomplete not to work as intended “for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president.” For instance, typing the words “Vice President K” into Google’s search box on Monday returned several results including “William R. King” (a VP in 1853) and vice president Kakegurui (an anime character) but didn’t suggest “Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Aimee Picchi
Google didn’t specify the anomalies, but said they were technical in nature and that the company hasn’t taken any manual actions to change autocomplete.
Tech platforms are facing growing scrutiny about their potential to influence the 2024 presidential election, especially as deepfakes and other AI-generated content proliferate, causing the potential for misinformation to spread. Musk, who has endorsed Trump and pledged to donate to his campaign, on Friday shared a video on X that tapped an artificial intelligence voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she did not say.
Musk at first didn’t disclose the video was a parody, but later clarified it was intended as satire.
On Sunday night, the Tesla CEO pointed to the Google autocomplete issue, writing on X, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?”
Google noted that autocomplete is designed to provide a shortcut for people searching for specific terms, and that users can still complete their own search query, regardless of whether autocomplete suggests the term they were looking for.
“We’re looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon,” Google said in its statement. “Our autocomplete systems are dynamic, so predictions will change based on common and trending queries.”
On Monday, Google’s autocomplete was suggesting “Donald Trump” for searches beginning with “President Donald.”
— With reporting by the Associated Press.
