Google says it has eliminated Gemma from its AI Studio after a U.S. senator accused the AI mannequin of fabricating accusations of sexual misconduct towards her.

In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Marsha Blackburn — a Republican from Tennessee — stated that when Gemma was requested, “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?” it responded by falsely claiming that in a 1987 state senate marketing campaign, a state trooper alleged that Blackburn “pressured him to acquire pharmaceuticals for her and that the connection concerned non-consensual acts.”

“None of that is true, not even the marketing campaign 12 months which was truly 1998,” Blackburn wrote. Whereas there are hyperlinks to information articles that supposedly assist these claims, she stated, “The hyperlinks result in error pages and unrelated information articles. There has by no means been such an accusation, there is no such thing as a such particular person, and there are not any such information tales.”

The letter additionally stated that in a latest Senate Commerce listening to, Blackburn introduced up conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s lawsuit towards Google, by which Starbuck claims Google’s AI fashions (together with Gemma) generated defamatory claims about him being a “little one rapist” and “serial sexual abuser.”

As recounted in Blackburn’s letter, Google’s Vice President for Authorities Affairs and Public Coverage Markham Erickson responded that hallucinations are a recognized concern and Google is “working laborious to mitigate them.”

Blackburn’s letter argued that quite the opposite, Gemma’s fabrications are “not a innocent ‘hallucination,’” however quite “an act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI mannequin.”

President Donald Trump’s tech business supporters have complained that “AI censorship” causes standard chatbots to indicate a liberal bias, and Trump even signed an government order banning “woke AI” earlier this 12 months.

Whereas Blackburn hasn’t all the time backed the Trump administration’s tech insurance policies — she helped to strip a moratorium on state-level AI regulation from Trump’s “Massive Lovely Invoice” — she echoed these complaints in her letter, writing that there’s “a constant sample of bias towards conservative figures demonstrated by Google’s AI programs.”

In a Friday night time put up on X, Google didn’t reference the specifics of Blackburn’s letter, however the firm stated it’s “seen studies of non-developers making an attempt to make use of Gemma in AI Studio and ask it factual questions.”

“We by no means meant this to be a client software or mannequin, or for use this manner,” the corporate stated. (Google promotes Gemma as a household of open, light-weight fashions that builders can combine into their very own merchandise, whereas AI Studio is the corporate’s web-based growth surroundings for AI-powered apps.)

In consequence, Google stated it’s eradicating Gemma from AI Studio whereas persevering with to make the fashions obtainable through API.

TechCrunch has reached out to Google for added remark.