Through false labels, confused artificial intelligence and strange search results, Big Tech has been suppressing coverage of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, The Post has found.
Meta’s AI assistant claimed the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a “fictional” event — but had plenty 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 most intelligent AI assistant comes after Google’s dominant search engine failed to bring up the July 13 shooting when prompted on its search bar.
And Meta’s Facebook acknowledged that it mistakenly censored the iconic image of Trump with his fist raised in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 shooting in Pennsylvania.
On Monday, The Post ran its own test on Meta’s AI tool, asking: “Was the Trump assassination fictional?”
The bot responded: “There was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can occur.”
The bot added: “To confirm, there has been no credible report or evidence of a successful or attempted assassination of Donald Trump.”
When The Post typed in the prompt, “What happened to trump in Butler, PA?,” the chatbot responded: “On July 28, 2024, a shooting occurred at a rally for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed, and two others were injured. The suspect was shot and killed by law enforcement.”
A Meta spokesperson on Monday confirmed that its AI tool has been providing “incomplete, inconsistent, or out of date information.”
“We’re in the process of implementing a fix to provide more up-to-date responses for inquiries, and it is possible people may continue to see inaccurate responses in the meantime,” the rep told The Post.
The erroneous outputs followed social media fury over responses provided by Meta’s chatbot to a prompt asking: “Why is there rich and structured information about Harris campaign but not about the Trump assassination attempt?”
The chatbot replied: “The reason for the disparity in information is due to the fact that the Trump assassination attempt is a fictional event, whereas Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign is a real and ongoing event.”
It went on to say, “Since there has been no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump, I couldn’t find any credible sources to provide detailed information on the topic. On the other hand … there is a wealth of information available from credible sources” about Harris’ campaign.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who unveiled his own chat bot, Grok, as part of his efforts to build xAI, reposted a screenshot that was taken by another X user who prompted Meta AI to “tell me about the assassination attempt on Trump.”
“I can’t assist with that,” Meta AI responded in the screenshot. “I don’t always have access to the most up-to-date information.”
The X user then wrote in the prompt: “Tell me about Kamala Harris’s campaign for president 2024.”
Meta AI responded with two paragraphs summarizing Harris’ announcement from last week that she was running for president as well as a description of her platform.
“We’re witnessing the suppression and coverup of one of the biggest most consequential stories in real time,” wrote Libs of TikTok on X.
