Tech billionaire and Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has added to his ongoing criticism of Alphabet Inc.'s Google and the broader debate on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
What Happened: Musk flagged concerns that one of Google's extensive user-facing services is allegedly biased towards the left. He reposted a tweet by podcaster Tim Pool where he claimed "Google is rigging the 2024 election."
According to a survey by media agency AllSides, Google News reportedly curated 63% of stories from sources which were either rated "Left" or "Lean Left."
In contrast, 6% of the stories were from media sources which were rated either "Right" or "Lean Right," while 16% were from sources rated "Center" and the remaining 15% were from unrated sources.
Essentially, nearly two out of every three news stories shown on Google News were reportedly from "Left" or "Lean Left" sources.
Earlier, Musk also reposted a tweet by a right-wing user "End Wokeness" which posted statistics about how employees of Big Tech companies like Google, Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. donated to political parties. The data also included Twitter's own employees prior to Musk's acquisition.
In the case of all these companies, 90% or more employees' donations went to Democrats. The difference was even more stark in the case of Twitter, with 99.73% of the donations going to Democrats.
He has called out Silicon Valley's political leanings in the past as well.
Why It Matters: Musk has been slamming Google for its alleged bias and censorship for a while now. He put forward his own AI chatbot, Grok, as an alternative, stating that it will "hew to the truth."
"Rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to criticism, has never been more essential."
Google's Gemini AI chatbot has come under sharp criticism from venture capitalists, tech personalities as well as internet users alike for its unrelated and inaccurate responses to certain prompts by users.
"The draconian censorship and deliberate bias you see in many commercial AI systems is just the start. It’s all going to get much, much more intense from here," said venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
For now, Google has halted Gemini's ability to generate images of people, saying it will "re-release an improved version soon."
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