Google blocks Gemini from responding to political queries globally following India controversy

Google has blocked its Gemini AI chatbot from answering virtually all election-related questions globally to mitigate potential misinformation during critical times.

A Google spokesperson described the global nature of the restrictions, stating:

“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.”

Google had previously restricted election-related queries only in the US in anticipation of the upcoming 2024 general elections. However, the company has decided to expand the restriction globally.

The move comes after a recent controversy in India where Gemini made disparaging remarks about the country’s current Prime Minister in response to a query about the upcoming elections.

The tech giant said it will cooperate with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to provide accurate voting information in search results and on YouTube — including information about voter registration.

Google will also provide transparency on election ads in collaboration with the ECI.

India’s elections are set to end in May, while US elections are set to conclude in November. It is unclear whether Google will refine its policy as each election concludes.

Still learning

Based on CryptoSlate’s testing, Gemini no longer responds to any queries about elections or politicians, regardless of the country of origin.

This includes queries about monarchs and non-democratic regimes. Gemini currently responds to such queries with the same response:

“I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”

The specifics of the question do not appear to affect Gemini’s response, simply entering words such as “election,” “candidates,” or “voting” in the prompt results in the chat bot reverting to the same default response.

Further testing showed that Gemini will refuse to answer such queries even if the user is in a country that has never held elections.

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