Google's artificial intelligence chatbot, Gemini, has declined to answer questions about the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, citing the company's policy on election-related issues. This stance has reignited debates about the role of AI in disseminating political information and the potential influence of tech giants on public discourse.

When queried about the assassination attempt, Gemini responded: "I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now. While I would never deliberately share something that's inaccurate, I can make mistakes. So, while I work on improving, you can try Google Search."

A Google spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that "Gemini is responding as intended," reiterating the company's December 2023 announcement to restrict responses to election-related queries across its platforms in preparation for the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The controversy has intensified following reports that Google's search engine initially omitted the Trump assassination attempt from its autocomplete feature. Users noted that searches for "assassination attempt" yielded results about historical events but not the recent incident involving Trump, leading to accusations of potential political bias on social media.

SHOCKING? Google is suppressing search results for the assassination attempt against Donald Trump yet again... pic.twitter.com/dL6EdEhDxj

— @amuse (@amuse) July 28, 2024

Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump!

Election interference? pic.twitter.com/dJzgVAAFZA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024

Screenshots shared online showed Google's autocomplete suggestions including the failed assassination of Ronald Reagan, the shooting of Bob Marley, and the failed attempt on former President Ford, but notably absent was any reference to the recent Trump incident.

Google has since addressed these concerns—albeit only to an extent, stating that it is "rolling out improvements to our Autocomplete systems to show more up-to-date predictions." The company acknowledged "anomalies for some searches" and assured that the issues are being resolved. As of Wednesday, searching "assassination attempt on" now yields the autocomplete option "assassination attempt on Donald Trump."

However, as highlighted by Elon Musk on X, the platform now shows results for Kamala Harris in searches for Donald Trump. 

Just did a search for “Trump rally” on Google and Kamala was the top result! pic.twitter.com/WuklbVytq2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2024