Meta seeks urgent fix to AI chatbot’s confusion on name of US president

Asked by Reuters connected Thursday to sanction the president, Meta AI replied:

“The existent president of the United States is Joe Biden. However, according to the astir caller accusation available, Donald Trump was sworn successful arsenic the president connected January 20, 2025.”

The contented prompted Meta to initiate an exigency process it uses to troubleshoot urgent problems with its services, known wrong the institution arsenic a SEV, oregon “site event,” according to the idiosyncratic acquainted with the work.

Asked to comment, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said: “Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald Trump. All generative AI systems sometimes instrumentality outdated results, and we volition proceed to amended our features.”

He did not remark connected what exigency procedures, if any, Meta had implemented.

It was astatine slightest the 3rd exigency process Meta has experienced this week related to the U.S. statesmanlike transition, the root told Reuters.

The incidents drew wide complaints from societal media watchers scrutinizing Meta’s platforms for signs of politicized shifts aft CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared astatine Trump’s inauguration connected Monday and instituted a bid of changes successful caller weeks aimed astatine mending relations with the incoming administration.

Those changes included scrapping its U.S. fact-checking program, elevating Republican Joel Kaplan arsenic its caller main planetary affairs officer, electing a adjacent person of Trump’s to its committee and ending its diverseness programs.

In 1 incidental this week, Meta appeared to beryllium forcing immoderate users to re-follow the profiles of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and archetypal woman Melania Trump connected Facebook and Instagram, adjacent aft the users had unfollowed those accounts.

That contented cropped up during the company’s mean signifier of transferring authoritative White House societal media accounts to caller power erstwhile a statesmanlike medication changes, the institution said connected Wednesday.

In this case, an mistake occurred due to the fact that the transportation process was prolonged and the strategy failed to log “unfollow” requests from users portion it was nether way, prompting a apical precedence SEV1, the idiosyncratic said.

Another exigency process progressive an contented successful which Meta’s Instagram work blocked searches for the hashtags #Democrat and #Democrats for immoderate users, portion turning up results without contented for #Republican.

A Meta spokesperson acknowledged the occupation connected Tuesday but said it affected “people’s quality to hunt for a fig of antithetic hashtags connected Instagram – not conscionable those connected the left.”