Google says it has removed Gemma from its AI Studio after a U.S. senator accused the AI model of fabricating accusations of sexual misconduct against her.<\/p>\n
In a letter<\/a> to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Marsha Blackburn \u2014 a Republican from Tennessee \u2014 said that when Gemma was asked, \u201cHas Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?\u201d it responded by falsely claiming that during a 1987 state senate campaign, a state trooper alleged that Blackburn \u201cpressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNone of this is true, not even the campaign year which was actually 1998,\u201d Blackburn wrote. While there are links to news articles that supposedly support these claims, she said, \u201cThe links lead to error pages and unrelated news articles. There has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual, and there are no such news stories.\u201d<\/p>\n The letter also said that during a recent Senate Commerce hearing, Blackburn brought up conservative activist Robby Starbuck\u2019s lawsuit against Google<\/a>, in which Starbuck claims Google\u2019s AI models (including Gemma) generated defamatory claims about him being a \u201cchild rapist\u201d and \u201cserial sexual abuser.\u201d<\/p>\n As recounted in Blackburn\u2019s letter, Google\u2019s Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy Markham Erickson responded that hallucinations are a known issue and Google is \u201cworking hard to mitigate them.\u201d<\/p>\n Blackburn\u2019s letter argued that on the contrary, Gemma\u2019s fabrications are \u201cnot a harmless \u2018hallucination,\u2019\u201d but rather \u201can act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model.\u201d<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s tech industry supporters have complained that \u201cAI censorship\u201d<\/a> causes popular chatbots to show a liberal bias, and Trump even signed an executive order banning \u201cwoke AI\u201d<\/a> earlier this year. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco While Blackburn hasn\u2019t always backed the Trump administration\u2019s tech policies \u2014 she helped to strip a moratorium on state-level AI regulation<\/a> from Trump\u2019s \u201cBig Beautiful Bill\u201d \u2014 she echoed those complaints in her letter, writing that there\u2019s \u201ca consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Google\u2019s AI systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n