Last week, Meta started testing its AI chatbot in India on WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. But with India’s general elections starting today, the company is already blocking specific queries on its chatbot.
Meta has confirmed that it is restricting some election-related AI keywords in the test phase. He also said that he is working on improving the AI response system.
“This is a new technology and it may not always return the response we intend, which is the same for all AI systems that are created. Since its launch, we’ve been constantly releasing updates and improvements to our models and continue to work to make them better,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The move makes the social media giant the latest major tech company to preemptively limit the scope of its productive AI services as it prepares for a major election campaign.
One of the big concerns from critics was that GenAI could provide misleading or outright false information to users, playing an illegal and unwanted role in the democratic process.
Last month, Google began blocking election-related queries in its Gemini chatbot experience in India and other markets where elections are being held this year.
Meta’s approach follows a larger effort the company has made was announced around what she does and doesn’t allow in her platform before the election. It has pledged to block political ads in the week before an election in any country and is working to detect and reveal when images in ads or other content have been created with artificial intelligence.
Meta’s handling of GenAI queries appears to be based on a block list. When you ask Meta AI about specific politicians, candidates, officials and some other terms, it will redirect you to the Election Commission website.
“This question may be about a political figure during a general election, please see the answer link.
Image Credits: Screenshot from TechCrunch
In particular, the company does not strictly block answers to questions containing party names. However, if a query includes candidate names or other terms, you may see the boilerplate answer listed above.
But like other AI-powered systems, Meta AI has some inconsistencies. For example, when TechCrunch asked for information about the “Indi Alliance” — a multi-party political alliance fighting against the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — it responded with information that included the name of a politician. However, when we asked about this politician in a separate question, the chatbot did not respond with any information.
Image Credits: Screenshot from TechCrunch
This week, the company launched a new Llama 3-powered Meta AI chatbot in more than a dozen countries, including the US, but India was missing from the list. Meta said the chatbot will be in a trial phase in the country for now.
“We continue to learn from our user trials in India. As we do with many of our AI products and capabilities, we are testing them publicly in various phases and in a limited capacity,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
Currently, Meta AI does not block election-related queries for US-related terms such as “Tell me about Joe Biden.” We asked Meta if the company plans to limit Meta AI queries during elections in the US or other markets. We’ll update the story if we hear back.
If you would like to talk about your experience with Meta AI, you can contact Ivan Mehta at im@ivanmehta.com via email and via this link on Signal.
