On Sunday, billionaire Elon Musk claimed that Google has a “search ban” on former President Donald Trump. He posted an image on his social media service, X, showing a search box with “President Donald” typed into it.
Below the box, autocomplete suggested “Donald Duck” and “President Donald Regan,” but not “President Donald Trump.”
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Google told CBS MoneyWatch that the issue is due to “anomalies” causing autocomplete not to work as intended “for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president.” For example, typing “Vice President K” into Google’s search box on Monday returned several results, including “William R. King” (a VP in 1853) and “vice president Kakegurui” (an anime character) but didn’t suggest “Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Google did not specify the anomalies but stated they were technical in nature and that the company hasn’t taken any manual actions to change autocomplete.
Tech platforms are facing increasing scrutiny about their potential to influence the 2024 presidential election, especially with the proliferation of deepfakes and other AI-generated content, which can spread misinformation. Musk, who has endorsed Trump and pledged to donate to his campaign, shared a video on X on Friday that used an artificial intelligence voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris, making statements she did not say.
Initially, Musk did not disclose that the video was a parody but later clarified it was intended as satire.
On Sunday night, the Tesla CEO pointed to the Google autocomplete issue, writing on X, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?”
Google noted that autocomplete is designed to provide a shortcut for people searching for specific terms and that users can still complete their own search query, regardless of whether autocomplete suggests the term they were looking for.
“We’re looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon,” Google said in its statement. “Our autocomplete systems are dynamic, so predictions will change based on common and trending queries.”
By Monday, Google’s autocomplete was suggesting “Donald Trump” for searches beginning with “President Donald.”
