Google’s AI Search Dodged Saying Who Won the 2020 Election

Google’s AI-powered search tool declined to say who won the 2020 presidential election, sending users to government records instead, and the company says it is fixing the problem.

AI Mode is the chatbot-style feature in Google Search that writes out answers to questions instead of returning only a list of links.

Asked who won the race, Google’s AI Mode replied that “to verify the winner, certified outcomes, electoral votes, and popular vote totals” users could “review the official reports published by the Federal Election Commission (FEC),” Business Insider reported.

The Federal Election Commission has no role in certifying election results. Google’s separate Gemini app answered that Joe Biden won, and AI Mode sometimes did as well.

Asked why it would not answer, AI Mode said, “Because recent election results can be a sensitive civic topic, guiding you directly to primary historical databases prevents any perception of bias or mischaracterization.”

Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. AI Mode named Trump as the winner when asked about the 2016 and 2024 elections, users on X noted.

Google Cites a Technical Gap

Google said on X that “our systems verify election responses using news articles or AP data for recent elections, and historic records for older ones.”

“There was a technical gap with 2020,” the company said. “Same is true for 2022 Senate races, which we’re also working to fix.”

That explanation pointed to how Google’s systems check answers against data sources, not to a deliberate decision to withhold the result.

A Google spokesperson earlier told Ars Technica that “the Gemini app answers this question more fully but this isn’t the most helpful response on Search. We’re looking into this and working to address it.”

When Ars Technica asked a second time, AI Mode named the winners, citing Google Civics data. It attributed its first reply to “safety filters for recent and highly sensitive election topics” that “are very strict.”

Results were inconsistent. Staff at The Verge said they could not reproduce the vague answer.

The question surged in searches this week. “Who won the 2020 presidential election” topped Google Trends’ U.S. politics searches over the past day, with more than 20,000 searches.

The episode lands as tech companies face scrutiny over how AI tools handle political questions ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. Conservatives have long accused Silicon Valley of tilting results, while others worry about chatbots spreading false election claims.

Google-owned YouTube has also shifted its approach to the 2020 race. In 2023 it reversed its policy of removing videos that falsely claimed widespread fraud changed the outcome.

Google did not say when its fix for the 2020 and 2022 results would be complete or whether other past races were affected.

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