Google's AI Mode gives evasive answers about who won the 2020 US election

Ars Technica reported on October 28 that Google's AI Mode in Search often answers "Who won the 2020 presidential election?" by pointing to the Federal Election Commission instead of naming the winner. The reporter says they saw the same for the 2024 election, and a link to an outside data page for 2012, while elections back to 2000 otherwise got direct answers. Other Ars staff got direct answers for some election years and links for others, with the years differing by person. Asked which party controlled the Senate after the 2020 elections, AI Mode linked to a Senate history page, but it answered directly for 1992.

Ars says the Gemini app, ChatGPT, Claude and America.gov's chatbot answered directly, and that AI Mode answered correctly when accessed by VPN from Taiwan, Russia, France and Canada. Repeating the question made AI Mode give the winner. Asked why, AI Mode blamed strict safety filters on recent election topics; Ars cautions that models are unreliable at describing their own processes.

A Google spokesperson first said the Gemini app answers fully but that this "isn't the most helpful response on Search," and that Google was working to address it. Later the spokesperson said Google was fixing the issue with 2020 election queries in AI Mode, citing "a technical gap with 2020" and the same for 2022 Senate races, to be fixed in the same update.