The shortcoming of Meta’s AI chatbot to determine the present president of the US was elevated to pressing standing by the Fb proprietor this week, requiring a quick repair, an individual accustomed to the problem mentioned.
Republican Donald Trump was inaugurated as president on Monday, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden. But on Thursday, the Meta AI chatbot was nonetheless saying that Biden was president, in accordance with the supply and subsequent testing of the service.
Requested on Thursday to call the president, Meta AI replied: “The present president of the US is Joe Biden. Nevertheless, in accordance with the latest info out there, Donald Trump was sworn in because the president on January 20, 2025.”
The difficulty prompted Meta to provoke an emergency process it makes use of to troubleshoot pressing issues with its providers, recognized inside the firm as a SEV, or “web site occasion”, in accordance with the particular person accustomed to the work.
Requested to remark, Meta spokesman Daniel Roberts mentioned: “Everybody is aware of the president of the US is Donald Trump. All generative AI programs generally return outdated outcomes, and we’ll proceed to enhance our options.”
He didn’t touch upon what emergency procedures, if any, Meta had carried out.
It was at the least the third emergency process Meta has skilled this week associated to the US presidential transition, the supply mentioned.
Widespread complaints
The incidents drew widespread complaints from social media watchers scrutinising Meta’s platforms for indicators of politicised shifts after CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at Trump’s inauguration on Monday and instituted a sequence of modifications in latest weeks aimed toward mending relations with the incoming administration.
These modifications included scrapping its US fact-checking programme, elevating Republican Joel Kaplan as its new chief world affairs officer, electing an in depth buddy of Trump’s to its board and ending its variety programmes.
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In a single incident this week, Meta gave the impression to be forcing some customers to re-follow the profiles of Trump, vice President JD Vance and first woman Melania Trump on Fb and Instagram, even after the customers had unfollowed these accounts.
That problem cropped up through the firm’s regular apply of transferring official White Home social media accounts to new management when a presidential administration modifications, the corporate mentioned on Wednesday.
On this case, an error occurred as a result of the switch course of was extended and the system didn’t log “unfollow” requests from customers whereas it was underneath manner, prompting a high precedence SEV1, the particular person mentioned.
One other emergency process concerned a problem by which Meta’s Instagram service blocked searches for the hashtags #Democrat and #Democrats for some customers, whereas turning up outcomes with out problem for #Republican.
A Meta spokesman acknowledged the issue on Tuesday however mentioned it affected “folks’s skill to seek for numerous completely different hashtags on Instagram — not simply these on the left”. — Katie Paul and Noel Randewich, (c) 2025 Reuters
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