Blackburn published her letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday, just hours before the company announced the change to Gemma availability. She demanded Google explain how the model could fail in this way, tying the situation to ongoing hearings that accuse Google and others of creating bots that defame conservatives. At the hearing, Google's Markham Erickson explained that AI hallucinations are a widespread and known issue in generative AI, and Google does the best it can to mitigate the impact of such mistakes. Although no AI firm has managed to eliminate hallucinations, Google's Gemini for Home has been particularly hallucination-happy in our testing.
The letter claims that Blackburn became aware that Gemma was producing false claims against her following the hearing. When asked, "Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?" Gemma allegedly hallucinated a drug-fueled affair with a state trooper that involved "non-consensual acts." Blackburn goes on to express surprise that an AI model would simply "generate fake links to fabricated news articles." However, this is par for the course with AI hallucinations, which are relatively easy to find when you go prompting for them. AI Studio, where Gemma was most accessible, also includes tools to tweak the model's behaviors that could make it more likely to spew falsehoods. Someone asked a leading question of Gemma, and it took the bait.
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