(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced Wednesday that he’s investigating Google and Facebook parent company Meta for seemingly suppressing information about the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Comer’s announcement follows Google’s response to a House Judiciary Committee inquiry about the matter.
According to the Judiciary Committee, Google admitted that results for Trump assassination searchers were suppressed—blaming the problem on a “bug.” Likewise, Meta has explained that it “configured its AI chatbot to avoid answering questions about the Trump rally shooting in an attempt to avoid distributing false information.”
Comer has more questions, he said Monday in his letters to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In his letter, Comer told Zuckerberg that his Meta AI tool “ended up telling users that the shooting never happened.”
🚨NEW🚨
Chairman @RepJamesComer is launching an investigation following recent concerning reports indicating Meta’s AI assistant and Google Search’s Autocomplete function generated inaccurate or nongermane information related to the assassination attempt of President Donald…
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) August 14, 2024
From Zuckerberg, Comer asked for all internal policies or any other documents related to how the Meta AI chatbot is designed, reviewed, managed, and updated to take into account and incorporate recent newsworthy events. From Pichai, he asked for similar documents about Google Search.
Comer seeks information by August 28.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, also has numerous questions, including about how long Google knew it had a “bug,” what other features were affected by the bug and what impact the shoddy search engine results had on Americans’ ability to obtain information about the July 13 assassination attempt.
Jordan has said Google is obligated to provide records about the issue pursuant to his committee’s Feb. 15, 2023 subpoena. Jordan’s committee has been investigating the extent to which tech companies censor content at the government’s behest.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
