Google has been accused of hiding AI search results when users seek information about whether 79-year-old Donald Trump has dementia.
Typing the prompt “does Trump show signs of dementia” into Google’s search bar did bring up a list of websites, along with the message, “An AI Overview is not available for this search,” The Verge reported.
The AI Overview notice is no longer displayed at the top of the search results.
When switched to AI mode, Google does not provide a generated summary of information. Instead, it displays the same top web page results for the query. There is also no AI summary if you search for whether Trump shows signs of Alzheimer’s.
By contrast, Google does provide an AI summary about 82-year-old Joe Biden, who has also faced questions about his mental acuity during his time in office.
“Assessing whether Joe Biden shows signs of dementia is a complex question with various perspectives and differing conclusions,” Google’s AI mode states. It also lists examples of why Biden may be experiencing cognitive decline or apparent signs of dementia.
When you type “does Biden show signs of alzheimer’s” into AI mode, the response also says the answer is a “complex question with no definitive answer,” and that it “remains elusive without a formal medical diagnosis.”
The AI summary presents both sides of the debate, noting that Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents described the former president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The Verge suggested Google might be “worried about the president’s response” to questions about his alleged mental decline. YouTube, which Google owns, also agreed this week to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump after his account was suspended in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “Our systems automatically determine where an AI response will be useful, and it’s not always 100 percent consistent. We don’t show AI Overviews on every query and similarly in AI Mode, for some topics (like current events) we may show a list of links as the response.”
Trump, who is set to surpass Biden as the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, has not faced the same level of public scrutiny regarding his cognitive abilities, despite numerous concerning signs.
These include incoherent and rambling public speeches, frequent memory lapses, misremembering simple facts about his life, or simply making things up on the spot, such as the bizarre and false claim that his uncle, John Trump, taught the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This week, Trump could not recall that his first inauguration took place in January 2017, claiming during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his term “officially began” in 2016.
Speaking to the Daily Beast Podcast, psychologist Dr. John Gartner suggested that Trump’s “major deterioration” in language skills may also be a sign of dementia.
“He used to speak with a high level of vocabulary in very polished paragraphs. Now what we see is not only has his vocabulary gone down, but… there are times when he’s really unable to complete a thought,” Gartner told host Joanna Coles. “Sometimes he’s unable to complete a word.”
Trump, a self-described “very stable genius,” has dismissed any suggestion that he is in mental decline and frequently boasts about passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test used to detect cognitive impairment or early signs of dementia. The test involves tasks such as drawing a clock to show a specific time and identifying animals.
The Daily Beast has contacted Google for comment.
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