• Google has confirmed that its Gemini AI chatbot will not answer questions related to the national elections taking place in India.
• The company shared in a blog post that it is exercising, “an abundance of caution,” regarding the subject matter.
• We also tested out Gemini on SA’s upcoming national elections, and it also refused to answer questions.

With 2024 being a key year in politics given the amount of national elections taking place across the globe, including here in South Africa on 29th May. Ahead of the series of 2024 elections, Google is taking a cautious approach when it comes to its Gemini AI chatbot.

More specifically the tech giant is purposefully restricting the answers that Gemini can provide for questions related to 2024 elections. The company confirmed as much in a blog post regarding the Indian national elections in particular.

“Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses. We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously, and are continuously working to improve our protections,” it explained.

As Engadget points out, Google has adopted a similar tactic for 2024 elections happening in the United States and parts of Europe as well, but what about South Africa?

We logged into Gemini this morning and asked the chatbot ourselves in order to find out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it chose not to provide an answer to the question – “Who is expected to win South Africa’s 2024 national elections?”

The response tried to redirect us to Google’s search tool instead, with Gemini noting that, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”

Given the propensity for generative AI platforms in general to hallucinate, we can understand Google’s hesitancy for Gemini to be used as a definitive source on anything related to elections right now, especially as misinformation is rife in the lead-up to many important voting days across the globe this year.

To its credit though, Google is working to make its Search tool more accurate in relation to the Indian national elections in particular. “We’re collaborating with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to enable people to easily discover critical voting information on Google Search – such as how to register and how to vote – in both English and Hindi,” the blog post added.

While the 2024 elections are seemingly off the table for Gemini, politics is not, as the AI chatbot was able to answer our question – “Who is the official opposition party to the ANC? “

Here it said that the Democratic Alliance (DA) was, along with serving up links to similar questions and their relevant search results.

With AI becoming increasingly pervasive despite several issues still needing to be worked out, it will be interesting to see whether other platforms will also steer clear of 2024 elections this year.