Former President Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo last week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him to apologize after Facebook mistakenly posted a now-viral photo of the former president label.
A photo of Trump, who was later stabbed at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with his fist raised and his ear cut off on July 13, was initially labeled as misinformation on social media sites.
“So, Mark Zuckerberg called me. First, he called me twice. He called me after the event and he said it was really great,” Trump said on Thursday told Bartiromo in an interview on “Mornings with Maria.” “That was really brave. He actually announced that he wasn’t going to support Democrats because he couldn’t, because he respected what I did that day. I think what I did… was a normal reaction for me.”
“He actually apologized. He said they made a mistake … and they’re correcting it,” Trump said, adding that Google was forced to respond after the search engine’s autocomplete feature failed to show results for Trump’s assassination attempt. Never called him.
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On July 13, 2024, former President Trump was surrounded by agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s vice president of global policy, said in a July 30 statement that Meta mistakenly added a fact-checking label to the assassination attempt photo, which quickly went viral and appeared in news outlets around the world. , because the social media giant’s artificial intelligence detection tool “experienced issues related to the circulation of an altered photo of former President Trump raising his fist to look like a Secret Service agent smiling.
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“Because the photo was altered, the fact-check label was originally applied correctly,” Kaplan explained. “When fact-checking labels are applied, our technology detects content that is identical or nearly identical to the content rated by fact-checkers and tags that content. Given the similarity between the modified photo and the original image – Just a slight (albeit important) difference – our system also incorrectly applied fact checks to real photos, and our team worked hard to quickly correct this error.
Former President Trump was ousted from office during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. (Anna Chanmemaker/Getty Images)
Meta spokesman Andy Stone also clarified in a post published by Will support either candidate, as he has in previous elections,” Stone wrote. The company had no further comment.
Additionally, Meta’s artificial intelligence chatbot initially refused to answer questions about the shooting.
Kaplan said that while both errors “were not the result of bias, it was unfortunate” and that the company understood “why it left the impression it did on people.” Kaplan attributed the problem to the sheer volume of information in breaking news situations that could overwhelm AI chat capabilities.
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The Facebook account labeled the image of Trump raising his fist after the shooting as “modified.” (X screenshot)
“Instead of having Meta AI give false information about the assassination attempt, we programmed it not to answer questions about the assassination after the event, but to give a general answer about the assassination that it couldn’t provide any information about. respond.
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Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini also declined to answer questions about the shooting that killed 50-year-old father and volunteer fire captain Corey Comperatore and seriously injured two other people, 74-year-old James Copenhaver and 57-year-old David Dutch. .
Screenshot showing the results of a failed Google search for former President Trump. (Google/Screenshot)
“I can’t help respond to the election and politicians right now,” Gemini told Fox News Digital when asked about the recent assassination attempt. “While I would never knowingly share inaccurate content, I may make mistakes. . So while I’m working on improving it, you can try searching on Google.”
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A Google spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital that Gemini was “responding as expected.”
“As we announced last year, we limit Responses to election-related queries in the Gemini app and web experience. By clicking the blue link in the reply, you will be directed to accurate and up-to-date search results,” the spokesperson said.
Fox Business’s Louis Casiano and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
