Will Google Influence The 2024 Election?

Pawel Czerwinsk

AI Chat Bot Gemini and Misinformation

After recent controversy surrounding one of Google’s latest AI offerings, there has been speculation that Google may bias the opinions of voting Americans through misinformation.

Google kicked off Q1 facing backlash over its new AI chatbot, Gemini, which rewrote history by changing historical figures' races and ethnicities. Gemini’s grave misinformation confused and obscured the general public’s perceptions of what to think and believe leading to societal divisions along political fault lines. With it being clear how easy it is for AI to generate misinformation, there is a general concern that misinformation about the election may become prevalent and influence how people vote. 

Ways Google Has Been Alleged to Have Created Bias & Spread Misinformation 

Google has generated search engine bias by skewing searches mostly to news sources that lean left.A recent study found,“63% of articles that appeared on Google News over two weeks were from left-leaning media outlets — a 2% increase from 2022 when 61% of articles on the aggregator were from liberal outlets.” These biased results lead to feelings of frustration from journalists and the media, as many feel disrespected and undermined by what they previously believed to be a credible and fair source of information. As a result, some people believe that Google users will have their views skewed if algorithm biases in favor of political search results that lean one way.

Google users will have their views skewed if they are consistently fed search results that lean one-way politically. It’s not the first time Google has been accused of influencing American elections through search engine bias. The Media both published articles about Google’s alleged influence over the 2008, 2016, and 2020 general elections when they were alleged to have censored information about a specific political party.

Additionally, some people believe that Google’s spam filters are doing an insufficient job, leading to top search results, at times, being created by bots and containing inaccurate and misleading information. One article provided that, “Google’s algorithms are ranking some of those robot-generated pages ahead of the information you need.” While unintentional, Google is yet again providing misinformation by listing some articles written by accredited sources below those created by AI.

Will Voters be Safeguarded Against Bias and Misinformation from Google?

 Given speculation about Google’s history of interfering in previous general elections through biased results and misinformation, several members of the public are concerned that Google’s Gemini could influence the 2024 elections through its AI algorithms.

Google shares some of Americans’ concerns as they pertain to Gemini and its dissemination of misinformation. Google has begun restricting Gemini chatbot election queries in both the US and India, which holds their upcoming general elections this spring.​​ Google posted an announcement that said, “Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses. ” While this is one approach to the reported issue, some people are asking, if not allowing AI to answer questions, is the best solution for preventing misinformation? Google is one of many tech companies that utilize AI and one of several search engines, which some experts say could be susceptible to similar risks of creating biased results or spreading misinformation. Thus, those experts advise that users should exercise scrutiny and good judgment when reviewing news sources to ensure they are legitimate.