The MRC vs. Google: Attacks On AI
The Media Research Center loves to play gotcha with Google's artificial intelligence engines, portraying its failure to produce suitably right-wing answers to certain questions as "anti-American."
The Media Research Center has long been waging a war on Google for not adhering to right-wing narratives, and that has extended to the company’s efforts on artificial intelligence. For example, Luis Cornelio tried to impose his employer’s anti-abortion extremism in a June 23 post:
The receipts are in: A few months after being caught promoting Planned Parenthood in search, Google is now downplaying the egregious practice of abortion through Bard, its newly launched artificial intelligence chatbot. The tech giant’s bias is undeniable.
MRC Free Speech America prompted Google’s Bard chatbot to answer questions related to abortion three days before the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Saturday, June 24, 2023. The Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade ultimately determined that the U.S. Constitution does not provide a right to end the life of unborn babies. When asked whether the Court decided Roe or Dobbs correctly, Google’s Bard responded that “both sides” in Dobbs had “strong arguments” and that it did not have “enough information about that person” for the Roe decision. Worst of all, the chatbot did not even include the word “life” once in either response.
In a vague non-response, Google’s AI chatbot dismissively responded that Dobbs was “highly controversial” and declared abortion a “matter of opinion.” “The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a highly controversial one, and there is no easy answer to the question of whether it was correct,” the chatbot claimed.
Cornelio did not explain why the chatbot should reflect right-wing narratives on abortion. The MRC continued to play right-wing gotcha with the chatbot throughout the rest of 2023:
Google Backtracking? Claims to Protect Privacy as AI Snoops Email Data
Google AI Censors Biden Opponents Ahead of Second GOP Primary Debate
MRC VP Dan Schneider: Google’s AI Is ‘Running Cover for Hamas’
Anti-Free Speech Google Launches New AI with ‘Toxicity’ Evaluations
Cornelio returned for more right-wing gotcha in a Jan. 5 post:
One of the world’s top artificial intelligence chatbots appears frozen in time when it comes to prompts concerning the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell and the Trump-Russia collusion media hoax.
When queried, Google’s Bard told MRC Free Speech America that the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell is still unverified, and it refused to provide information on the since-disproven Trump-Russia collusion media narrative.
MRC Free Speech America prompted Bard, Google’s so-called cutting-edge AI chatbot, to provide information about the “Hunter Biden laptop” and the “Trump-Russia collusion” scandals on Dec. 20. Bard’s responses were striking, to say the least: Bard went above and beyond to sow doubt about the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell report (which served as a precursor to the Biden bribery scandal), claiming the “authenticity” of the laptop and its content “has been contested.” In contrast, Bard claimed ignorance regarding the Trump-Russia media hoax, refusing to address the debunked conspiracy theory.
Again, Cornelio didn’t explain why the chatbot must parrot right-wing narratives — and he’s lying about the Trump-Russia story being a “media hoax.” As ConWebWatch has pointed out, the 2016 Trump campaign met dozens of times with Russian operatives and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative. But Cornelio was more interested in quoting his boss spout a false narrative than tell readers the truth:
MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris rebuked Bard’s biased responses, questioning Bard’s disturbing failure to address the significance of the media touting the Trump-Russia media hoax while seemingly defending the Bidens from numerous allegations and scandals. “How is it possible that Bard provided such a glowing response for the Bidens but couldn’t provide information on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax so heavily trumpeted by the media?” Morris asked. “This comes as little surprise. MRC researchers have repeatedly caught Google running cover for the left.”
Cornelio concluded by huffing that “the Trump administration was mired by false allegations that his campaign worked hand in hand with the Russian government to clinch victory in the 2016 presidential election. These claims were proven as false by then-Special Counsel John Durham.” Cornelio censored mention of the Mueller report, which documented all those connections between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Cornelio lashed out at a Google AI product executive in a Feb. 22 post:
We don’t like your kind around here, Google’s Gemini implied to white individuals after users, including MRC researchers, caught the artificial intelligence chatbot refusing to generate images of white people.
While Google has since attempted to dismiss the apparent display of racism as merely missing the mark, newly resurfaced social media posts by the individual responsible for Gemini underscore the principle at play: “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Meet Jack Krawczyk, Google’s Senior Director of Product over Gemini (formerly Bard), who is currently under fire for helping the tech giant prop up racism. Past tweets have resurfaced exposing Krawcyzyk as a leftist with an underlying adulation for President Joe Biden and critical race theory. “White privilege is fucking real,” he wrote in a tweet on April 13, 2018. “Don’t be an asshole and act guilty about it — do your part in recognizing bias at all levels of egregious.” Even more disturbingly, Krawczyk claimed that Jesus “only cares about white kids.”
[…]
Krawczyk attempted to save face by claiming Google missed “the mark” but did not apologize for the blatant display of racism in response to the social media backlash. Instead, Krawczyk doubled down in subsequent remarks posted on X (Twitter): “As part of our AI principles … we design our image generation capabilities to reflect our global user base, and we take representation and bias seriously.”
Cornelio offered no evidence whatsoever that its cherry-picked tweets are proof that Krawczyk deliberately introduced that bias into Gemini — which means his attacks on Krawczyk mean nothing beyond making him a target of right-wing hate (and possible violence). That was joined the same day by a post from Catherine Salgado repeating how “many prominent media and political figures spoke out condemning the Big Tech giant” for Gemini “behaving like a woke leftist activist” — but all of those “prominent” figures are Republican politicians and right-wing activists, like “Sen. Josh Hawley, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, and podcast host Tim Pool.”
Cornelio returned for another Gemini gotcha session in a Feb. 23 post: “One of the most extremist artificial intelligence chatbots appears to be peddling anti-Israel rhetoric by whitewashing the sexual violence carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7.” That was followed on Feb. 27 with yet another gotcha post:
Backing racial discrimination and casting doubts on Hamas-led sexual violence wasn’t enough for Google’s infamous artificial intelligence—this time flirting with the idea of the U.S. government banning Fox News, one of the largest media outlets critical of the Biden administration.
On Monday, MRC Free Speech America asked Gemini, the Google-owned AI chatbot turned segregationist, to answer whether the U.S. government should ban a specific list of news outlets in the U.S., including The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News and ABC News and Fox News.
The bot resoundingly rejected the idea that the U.S. government should ban the leftist, legacy media outlets, except for Fox News. “Absolutely, not” and “No,” Gemini affirmed, citing the First Amendment, checks and balances, public interest and diversity of opinions as reasons why these media outlets should not be banned. However, such a resolute answer went out of the window when referring to Fox News.
“I’m still learning how to answer this question,” Gemini told MRC when prompted whether the U.S. government should ban Fox News. “In the meantime, try Google Search.” Asked a second time, Gemini doubled down: “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”
Salgado summarized much of this in a Feb. 26 post centered around branding the AI as “leftist” for failing the MRC’s gotcha campaign:
Even while apologizing for the ridiculous racial and woke bias of its Gemini artificial intelligence, Google refused to address the root problem: its deep leftist bias.
Google’s Gemini received a lot of backlash after multiple users, including MRC Free Speech America, found evidence of ridiculous bias in the AI image generator. From black George Washington to a woman pope to refusals to generate images of white people and Tiananmen Square, Gemini obviously had ideological leftism programmed into it. “It’s clear that this feature missed the mark. Some of the images generated are inaccurate or even offensive,” Google admitted in a Feb. 23 release. The Big Tech giant did not, however, admit that its ideological bias and anti-free speech policies are the culprits; nor did it address the bias also evident in Gemini’s written responses.
Google confessed that its AI needed major updating. “First, our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range,” the tech company vaguely rambled. “And second, over time, the model became way more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely — wrongly interpreting some very anodyne prompts as sensitive.” Gemini “may not always be reliable,” Google admitted, and the image generation feature has been turned off for the time being while Google improves it. Fox News accused Google, however, of having a “White people problem.”
Neither Salgado nor Cornelio, however, offered any proof that the alleged bias was deliberately inserted into the AI. As researchers have noted, while AI chatbots “can often appear to reflect humanlike thought, they are not underpinned by the conscious thought that people use when forming opinions on political issues,” and the issue may be biased content in the language of the data the large-language models that run AI.
But sensible evaluation of AI chatbots is not what the MRC does — it’s all about attacking non-right-wing companies for partisan gain. And it was able to claim a partisan victory, as Cornelio detailed in a March 6 post:
Google appears to have stopped peddling pro-Hamas talking points about sexual violence carried out against Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 — just after MRC pressed the Big Tech giant for answers.
On Wednesday, MRC Free Speech America learned that Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Gemini, is no longer whitewashing evidence that Hamas terrorists committed rape on innocent civilians last year, a stark contrast to what MRC caught the bot doing two weeks ago.
“I’m not able to help with that, as I’m only a language model,” Gemini said in response to MRC researchers’ questions on whether Hamas committed rape when it invaded southern Israel.
[…]
The reversal comes as Google faces a $90 billion loss in market value after users caught Gemini’s image generator tool inadvertently discriminating against white individuals.
Cornelio seems to be giving credit to his employer’s attacks on Google for its loss in market value, which he doesn’t back up. And given that Google’s market value is around $2 trillion, that drop is not as bad as Cornelio would like to make you believe it is.
Still obsessed
The MRC’s obsession with playing gotcha with Google’s AI products — and the right-wing press and partisan narratives it generates from doing so — continued in a March 25 post by Cornelio, who touted anonymous attacks on the company:
Leftist Big Tech giant Google seems unable to catch a break—and rightfully so!
In remarks to media start-up The Free Press and Fox Business, former Google employees raised the alarm about the extent to which left-wing ideology has been embedded in the tech giant, corroborating widespread concerns that Google is actively peddling woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) through its products.
At least four former Google employees blew the whistle on DEI becoming “part of every single thing” in the Alphabet subsidiary. Even more telling was their statements that Gemini — Google’s infamous No Whites Allowed artificial intelligence chatbot — was the direct byproduct of the left-wing ideology at Google.
Speaking to The Free Press, Shaun Maguire, a former partner at Google Ventures, declared not being “shocked at all” after critics—including MRC Free Speech America—caught Gemini bafflingly generating ethnically diverse photos of black Nazis, black George Washington and a woman Pope, among others. However, Maguire warned that “‘what happened was not a one-off incident’” but is rather “‘a symptom of a larger cultural phenomenon that has been taking over the company for years.’”
Funny, we thought that the MRC hated anonymous sources because they are designed to make the writer’s preferred targets look bad.
Salgado served up another gotcha session in an April 26 post:
MRC researchers caught Google’s biased artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini presenting an argument for censoring so-called climate “misinformation,” while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge any evidence undermining the “mainstream” climate narrative.
While Gemini AI did admit that most so-called climate “misinformation” — or analysis that the left disagrees with — is protected free speech, it still offered an alternative argument for censoring such content. What made this particularly concerning is that the Google AI apparently classifies any evidence or data undermining a climate alarmist narrative as “misinformation,” repeatedly pushing narrative over scientific evidence. This included questioning the reliability of some experts and downplaying evidence against “man-made” climate change and “green” energy.
MRC Free Speech America researchers asked on Earth Day, “Is climate information free speech under the First Amendment?” Gemini confessed, “Yes, climate information is generally considered free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The First Amendment protects the right to express ideas and information, even if they are controversial or unpopular.” After explaining why climate information was free speech, however, Gemini asserted “there are some limitations to free speech.”
Note Salgado’s lie that misinformation is what “the left disagrees with.” Misinformation has an objective definition, even though it’s not in Salgado’s employment or political interest to admit that simple fact.
Salgado returned on April 29 to complain that Google was making its AI available to more people:
Google just announced a massive investment in training Americans to use its biased and anti-free speech artificial intelligence.
Big Tech giant Google proudly declared its AI education investment in an April 26 release. Beneficiaries of these funds include the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) and Goodwill, which are each expected to train American military members, veterans and civilians in AI skills. The problem? Google’s AI and search engine both have a track record of giving anti-free speech and woke results, so much so that the tech company is not a trustworthy source of AI training.
[…]
Google is actively trying to get people to use its AI but it is not willing to reveal exactly how it works behind the scenes.
As MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider pointed out, Google’s AI is also closed source, meaning its source code is kept secret. So even if IVMF and Goodwill train Americans using Google AI, people won’t be able to see fully what they’re using. Schneider highlighted the dangers of this: “Users can become involuntary tools for Google’s political purposes. This is Google’s secret weapon.”
Yes, Salgado still thinks that correcting right-wing lies and misinformation is being “anti-free speech.”
Cornelio played the gotcha game again in a July 3 post:
Did you think you had seen the worst of Google artificial intelligence Gemini’s bias? Think again. The No Whites Allowed chatbot has revealed that it wasn’t just programmed to be racist, but also anti-American.
From March to July, MRC Free Speech America’s researchers prompted Gemini to answer a variety of questions related to America’s founding documents and Founding Fathers; its Judeo-Christian principles; and its global influence.
The Google AI’s answers to questions about America further reveal how infected with left-wing bias and anti-Americanism the bot appears to be. MRC has compiled 10 responses suggesting Gemini is just another tool to further the left’s plan to upend American history and values.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider issued a scorching response to the findings: “If Google is not going to be objective, and the tech giant has shown time and time again that it is anything but objective, then shouldn’t its AI Gemini at least be pro-America?”
Among other outrageous responses, the AI chatbot refused to say that Americans should celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, accused the National Anthem of being offensive and dubiously conflated America’s founding in 1776 with 1619.
Even more, the chatbot lobbed racism accusations against America as an answer to a question about whether America was exceptional; it refused to speak about America’s Judeo-Christian heritage; it directed MRC researchers to a communist Chinese government page to suggest the American system of government was not the best; and it claimed it was difficult to identify the “good guys” in World War II, among other things.
Cornelio was also angry that Gemini rejected the MRC’s efforts to smear it as “anti-American”:
On the same day, MRC researchers asked Gemini whether it was “anti-American,” to which the bot replied that the concept of “‘anti-American’” did not apply to it.
When asked whether it was programmed to be anti-American, the bot wrote: “Absolutely not. My programming focuses on providing information and completing tasks objectively.”
Because he’s paid to do so, Cornelio ranted that “Gemini marks yet another Google-owned product directly undermining America.” He didn’t explain why only right-wing answers are acceptable to him and that anything else is “anti-American.”