Google has removed its Gemma AI model from AI Studio following accusations from U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn. The Republican senator from Tennessee alleged that the model fabricated claims of sexual misconduct against her.
In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Blackburn stated that when Gemma was asked if she had been accused of rape, it responded with a false claim. The AI model alleged that during a 1987 state senate campaign, a state trooper accused Blackburn of pressuring him to obtain prescription drugs and that their relationship involved non-consensual acts. Blackburn clarified that none of this is true, noting the campaign in question actually occurred in 1998. She said the links provided by the AI to support these claims lead to error pages or unrelated news articles, and she asserted that no such accusation, individual, or news stories exist.
The senator’s letter also referenced a recent Senate Commerce hearing where she discussed a lawsuit from conservative activist Robby Starbuck against Google. In that lawsuit, Starbuck claims Google’s AI models, including Gemma, generated defamatory statements labeling him a child rapist and serial sexual abuser. According to the letter, Google’s Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy, Markham Erickson, responded that hallucinations are a known issue and the company is working to mitigate them.
Blackburn argued that Gemma’s fabrications are not a harmless hallucination but an act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model. This incident occurs amid broader complaints from supporters of former President Donald Trump about AI censorship, alleging a liberal bias in popular chatbots. Trump himself signed an executive order earlier this year banning what he termed woke AI.
Although Blackburn has not always supported the Trump administration’s tech policies, her letter echoed these complaints, stating there is a consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Google’s AI systems.
In a post on X, Google did not address the specifics of Blackburn’s letter but stated it had seen reports of non-developers using Gemma in AI Studio to ask factual questions. The company clarified that it never intended Gemma to be a consumer tool or model used in that manner. Google promotes Gemma as a family of open, lightweight models for developers to integrate into their own products, with AI Studio being its web-based development environment for AI-powered apps.
As a result, Google said it is removing Gemma from AI Studio while continuing to make the models available via API. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for additional comment.