In a series of X postings, Elon Musk has charged Google of being biased against former President Donald Trump on multiple occasions.
The main target of prominent conservative opponents like Musk—who has embraced Trump—and others was Google’s autocomplete function, which suggests terms depending on what you put into the search field.
According to screenshots that Musk shared, Google’s autocomplete predictions for the terms “assassination attempt of” and “president donald” do not include Trump.
Some users noticed that Bob Marley and former President Ronald Reagan were the top autocomplete choices when they typed the phrase “assassination attempt of” into the search bar. At a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, Trump was wounded in the ear during an attempted assassination. Many conservative pundits conjectured that Trump’s exclusion from the recommendations represented a deliberate attempt to sway the November election.
Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X on Sunday, saying, “Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris.” “Everyone is aware that Google is purposefully interfering in the election. Honestly abhorrent Musk liked and discussed a related post.
Similar results were obtained by NBC News when it typed in “assassination attempt of”; Trump was not included in the autocomplete predictions.
A Google representative informed NBC News through a statement that there were some problems with the Autocomplete tool on Monday.
According to a Google representative, “autocomplete is currently not working as intended for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president.” “We’re investigating these anomalies and developing enhancements that we want to release shortly. Predictions made by our dynamic autocomplete systems may vary depending on popular and trending questions.