• by Colin Kirkland , August 30, 2024

Building on its prior commitments to restrict AI-generated election queries, while helping users identify AI-generated content across its platforms, Google has announced that it will begin applying additional restrictions to its Gemini chatbot and other generative AI (GAI) products ahead of this year’s high-profile political elections. 

At the end of 2023, Google said that in preparation for the 2024 elections, including the U.S. Presidential election, it would “restrict the types of election-related queries” its Gemini chatbot would respond to “out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic.”

This includes queries focused on candidates, voting processes and election results. 

Now, Google says that additional safeguards will apply to Search AI Overviews, YouTube AI-generated summaries for Live Chat, Gems, and image generation in Gemini, extending restrictions more widely across its AI ecosystem.

“Particularly for federal and state-wide elections, our users depend on us to provide reliable and up-to-date information on topics like current candidates, voting processes and election results — and this new technology can make mistakes as it learns or as news breaks,” Google’s Vice President of Trust and Safety Laurie Richardson wrote in a recent blog post. “For many of these queries on Gemini, we also provide a link connecting users directly to Google Search for the latest and most accurate information.”

The company says it is taking a “cautious approach” because it wants to “get this right.”

As for ads, Google requires that advertisers disclose when an ad or video includes synthetic content that does not authentically depict real or realistic-looking people or events. The company also recently added generated disclosures for YouTube Election Ads for some formats on the video-sharing platform. 

“Advertisers will now simply click a checkbox when their YouTube ad meets our disclosure requirements for synthetic or digitally altered content and they’ll have a Google-generated disclosure placed in their ad,” the company says. 

In addition, Google is updating Search with a feature aimed at helping people in the U.S. find information about registering to vote. YouTube users will also see new features steering them toward credible information about election candidates and their political parties, reminding users where and how to vote.