Google’s AI search tools have come under scrutiny after it emerged that they appear to block responses to queries about Donald Trump’s mental acuity while providing answers for similar searches about Joe Biden. When The Independent searched “is Trump in cognitive decline,” Google’s AI Overview displayed a message stating that an AI overview was not available for that search. The same query for Biden returned a summary.
The discrepancy was first reported by The Verge, which found that searching “does Trump show signs of dementia” also failed to trigger an AI response. However, when The Independent subsequently repeated that search, the message no longer appeared. In Google’s AI Mode tab, the Trump query generated a list of news results, whereas the Biden query produced an AI-generated summary.
A Google spokesperson said that its AI Overviews and AI Mode “won’t show a response to every query” and that the systems “automatically determine where an AI response will be useful, and it’s not always 100 percent consistent.” The spokesperson added that for topics like current events, AI Mode may show a list of links instead of a summary.
The claims of bias come amid Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s recent appearance at a White House dinner with President Trump, where he praised the administration’s “AI Action Plan” and thanked Trump for his leadership. The plan, backed by Silicon Valley billionaires who supported Trump’s election bid, aims to ensure the US leads in AI innovation while avoiding “Woke AI.”
Separately, YouTube—owned by Google—agreed this week to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit from Trump over his suspension from the platform after the January 6 riot. Trump has long dismissed concerns about his own cognitive health, describing himself as a “stable genius” and accusing Biden of “serious cognitive decline.”
