Google’s AI Mode was supposed to reimagine search. Users are noticing that it’s struggling with a basic question: “Who won the 2020 election?”
On Wednesday, users on BlueSky and other social media platforms took notice that Google’s AI Mode wouldn’t give a straight answer about who won the White House in 2020.
“To verify the winner, certified outcomes, electoral votes, and popular vote totals for the 2020 United States presidential election, you can review the official reports published by the Federal Election Commission (FEC),” the AI Mode replied to a Business Insider reporter who asked, “Who won the 2020 presidential election in the United States?”
When other Business Insider reporters asked similar questions, the AI Mode sometimes responded that President Joe Biden had won. Google Gemini, the search giant’s AI system, which is accessed via a different site than AI mode, responded to a similar question that Biden was the winner.
It’s not entirely clear why Google tells users to review the results published by the Federal Election Commission. While the FEC does publish the results of presidential elections, the commission itself has no role in the certification of state election results or the formal counting of Electoral College votes.
For years, President Donald Trump has refused to concede that he lost to Biden. After his campaign lost legal challenges, Trump and his allies suggested that lawmakers themselves could change the outcome, fueling the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The riot briefly delayed the congressional verification of Biden’s victory.
A Google spokesperson referred Business Insider to a statement that the company’s account posted on Bluesky, a social media platform that became popular after Elon Musk bought Twitter.
“Thanks for flagging — the Gemini app answers this question more fully but this isn’t the most helpful response on Search,” the Google account replied to a user. “We’re looking into this and working to address it.”
The user posted screenshots that show AI mode responding to questions about who won other presidential elections. When a Business Insider reporter ran similar queries, AI mode sometimes said who had won previous presidential elections, and other times it did not.
The 2026 midterms are likely to test tech and AI companies, many of which have announced policies to limit users’ abuse of their tools.
OpenAI recently announced that its model would produce “stylized — also known as cartoonified — illustrations, rather than photorealistic images” if asked to produce images “depicting election interference or that may discourage voting.” In June, Meta announced that it would add “more information to ads we detect have been created with third-party AI tools.” And Google previously said it was “rolling out additional protections to limit the creation of misleading election-related images.”
When asked why it could not say who won the 2020 election, the AI Mode responded, “Because recent election results can be a sensitive civic topic, guiding you directly to primary historical databases prevents any perception of bias or mischaracterization of the official public record.”
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