President Donald Trump’s new AI-powered government website had an answer at odds with a claim he has repeatedly made: Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Asked who won the race, America.gov initially responded that “Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” Variety reported Tuesday. The chatbot cited the National Archives, which records the official Electoral College tally of 306 votes for Biden and 232 for Trump.
The answer didn’t last long.
While Trump was still speaking at Tuesday’s launch event, America.gov began refusing to answer the same question, according to the Associated Press.
The reversal presented an immediate complication for the administration’s new digital front door: America.gov is designed to answer questions using official government sources, including records that conflict with claims made by the president.
Before the change, the chatbot said official federal sources did not show widespread fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 election, per the AP. Later, when asked who won, it responded that it could not answer “political questions.”
And the 2020 election wasn’t the only subject that became off-limits.
America.gov also began declining to answer questions about whether Trump had been impeached or convicted of felony charges, the AP further noted.
Before the changes, the chatbot contradicted Trump on another long-running point of contention: crowd size. Asked whether Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration drew more people than Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, America.gov said it did, the AP reported.
Trump unveiled America.gov Tuesday as an AI-powered portal intended to give Americans a single place to access government information and services. The site says its answers are sourced from federal, state and local government websites.
The platform uses technology from Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok, according to the AP. U.S. chief design officer Joe Gebbia helped oversee its development.
Trump also signed an executive order Tuesday directing federal agencies to integrate their public-facing services with America.gov. The launch comes as the administration pushes to accelerate AI development across the federal government.
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