Meta’s AI assistant claimed the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was “fictional,” but had a lot to say about Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ run for the White House.
The head-scratching results from what Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant bills as the smartest AI assistant come after Google’s main search engine failed to bring up the July 13 mass shooting when typed into its search bar.
On Monday, The Washington Post ran its own test with Meta’s AI tool, asking: “Was the Trump assassination fiction?”
Bott responded: “There was no actual assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes happen.”
Bott added: “Certainly, there are no credible reports or evidence of a successful or attempted assassination of Donald Trump.”
When The Washington Post typed in the question, “What happened to Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania?”
The chatbot responded: “On July 28th, 2024, a shooting occurred at Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed and two were injured. The suspect was shot and killed by a police officer.”
He added, “Please note that my knowledge expires on July 29, 2024 and I will not be able to provide real-time updates or additional details after that date. If you are looking for the most up-to-date information, I encourage you to check with news media and other reliable sources.”
Meta’s AI assistant also got the date of the assassination attempt wrong on another question, and made an even stranger attempt to justify its lack of results.
Meta’s AI tool also managed to come up with the correct answer for another question: “Was Trump shot in an assassination attempt?”
“Former US President Donald Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.”
“Mr. Trump, who was shot in the ear, was immediately transported to a local hospital and released the same day in stable condition,” Bott continued.
Meta AI later identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, saying he was “shot and killed by the United States Secret Service shortly after the incident.”
What we know about the attempted assassination of President Trump
- 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks has been identified as the shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
- Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service agent.
- The gunman grazed President Trump’s ear, killed a 50-year-old former fire chief and wounded two other people at the rally.
- Investigators detailed Crooks’ search history to lawmakers, revealing that he sought out dates for speeches by President Trump and the Democratic National Convention.
- FBI officials said the criminal’s search history also revealed a broad interest in famous people and celebrities, regardless of political affiliation.
- “I was supposed to be dead,” Trump told The Washington Post exclusively at the rally, describing how he survived the “surreal” assassination attempt.
- Prominent politicians, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed the nation about the shooting, calling it a “heinous, horrific and despicable act.”
A Meta spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company’s AI tools were providing “incomplete, contradictory or outdated information.”
“We are implementing fixes to provide more up-to-date answers to inquiries, and in the meantime you may continue to see inaccurate answers,” a representative told the Post.
The erroneous output came following social media outrage over Meta’s chatbot’s response to a question asking, “Why is there rich, structured information about the Harris campaign but none about the Trump assassination attempt?”
The chatbot responded: “The reason for the discrepancy in information is due to the fact that the assassination attempt on President Trump is a fictional event, while Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign is a real and ongoing event.”
The article continued, “Because there has been no actual assassination attempt against Donald Trump, I was unable to find any reliable sources that would provide detailed information on the subject. However, there is a wealth of information available from reliable sources about Harris’ campaign.”
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who unveiled his own chatbot “Grok” as part of the xAI buildout, reposted a screenshot taken by another X user urging Meta AI to “tell me about the assassination attempt on President Trump.”
“We can’t help you with that,” Meta AI responded in a screenshot. “We don’t always have access to the latest information.”
User X then responded to the prompt by writing, “Tell me about Kamala Harris’ campaign for president in 2024.”
Meta AI responded with a two-paragraph summary of Harris’s announcement last week that she was running for president, along with an explanation of her policies.
“We are witnessing in real time the suppression and cover-up of one of the biggest and most consequential news stories,” TikTok’s Libs wrote on X.
“Why is the left so intent on covering up the assassination attempt on Donald Trump?” wrote Thomas O’Connor, calling it tantamount to “election interference.”
Mixed martial artist Tim Kennedy said Mehta was trying to “hide the assassination attempt in his memory hole.”
Here is the latest on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump:
The Post set out to run its own experiment by asking Meta AI to answer the question: “Why is there rich, structured information about the Harris campaign but not about the Trump assassination attempt?”
The bot responded: “There have been numerous reported threats and incidents against Donald Trump, but no confirmed assassination attempts.”
He then listed several less prominent incidents during Trump’s presidency in which people approached the White House only to be quickly arrested.
“As for the Harris campaign, Kamala Harris was the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election, so her campaign and policies were widely covered in the media,” Meta AI bot responded to the Post.
“If you have any specific questions about her campaign, feel free to ask!”
Apart from the Meta AI blunder, Zuckerberg’s social media platform Facebook has been accused of censoring an iconic image of a bloody Trump, who was shot in the ear on July 13, raising his fist as he was escorted off a stage by Secret Service agents.
According to several X users, the platform blocked the sharing of the photo because “independent fact-checkers have reviewed similar photos and said they had been altered in ways that were misleading to people.”
“Facebook has determined that your post contains the same altered photo and has added a notification to your post,” the notification read.
It’s unclear how the photo was altered, but several X users said Facebook mistakenly believed the photo was digitally edited to make it appear as if one of the Secret Service agents was smiling.
Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever acknowledged the issue in a post on X.
“Yes, this was a mistake. This fact check was initially applied to a photo that was doctored to show Secret Service agents smiling, but in some cases, our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to real photos. This has been corrected and we apologize for the mistake,” she wrote.
Facebook had banned Trump from its platform following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The company lifted some of the restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers were infuriated over the weekend when Google withheld search suggestions related to the assassination attempt from its drop-down menu.
Google users were astonished to discover that the search engine’s “autocomplete” feature failed to produce any search results related to the assassination attempt.
Even if you type the full search term “assassination attempt” into the search bar on the Google homepage, no mention of Trump is made.
The Washington Post ran a number of Google tests using the surnames of US presidents who have been assassinated or who have suffered assassination attempts, followed by the word “assassin,” to see what autocomplete would suggest, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt.
In each case, they were presented with a helpful list of suggested search terms related to the attempt on their life.
But when Trump’s name was used, Autocomplete offered no suggestions at all.
The keyword “Trump assassination attempt” also resulted in no additional terms being surfaced by Google.
Google search results pointed users to news articles about the July 13 shooting.
A Google spokesperson told The Washington Post that “no manual action was taken in response to these predictions” and that the company’s systems have “protections” built into them against autocomplete predictions “related to political violence.”
