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Google On Thursday, the company blamed a “data error” after users reported that former President Joe Biden was missing from the company’s search results.
On Wednesday, users noticed that search results that included “President of the United States,” “President of the United States” and “Presidents of the United States in order” did not include Biden, who ended his four-year term as president on Monday. Users reported seeing a list of presidents from George Washington to the President of the United States Donald Trump. Some users posted screenshots of their results showing how the list omitted Biden.
CNBC tried to search for the US president on Wednesday night and also encountered results that missed Biden. The company restored Biden’s results Thursday.
“We experienced a brief data error in our knowledge graph,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC on Thursday. Knowledge graph is a broad term used to describe systems that store related information. “We found the root cause and resolved it quickly.”
Google search results for “Presidents of the United States” omit President Joe Biden, who ends his four-year term on Monday.
The error comes after Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo An invitation to employees on Election Day in November asked them to remember that people turn to the company’s services for “high-quality and reliable information.”
“Whoever voters entrust, let us remember the role we play in our work, through the products we build, and as a business: to be a trusted source of information for people of all backgrounds and beliefs,” Pichai wrote. “We will and must maintain this.”
Google’s Biden omission error comes as the company experiences Turbulent times These include a number of product incidents and global scrutiny.
“It’s not lost on me that we’re facing scrutiny around the world,” Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said at an all-hands meeting in December. first reported Reported by CNBC. “It comes with our scale and success. It’s part of a broader trend where technology is impacting society at scale.”
After a year of product missteps, Google has launched Imagen 2, which turns user prompts into AI-generated images. Immediately after its launch, the product came under scrutiny due to historical errors discovered by users. company Pulled this function In the months leading up to the relaunch, Pichai told employees that the company had “offended our users and displayed bias.”
Google’s artificial intelligence summary product “AI Overview” on top of Google’s traditional search results also faces problems, and users also Find problems quickly after that launch.
Pichai is one of the tech CEOs who has drawn closer to Trump, who has previously claimed that Google intentionally hid his search results. Those ones allegation unsubstantiated.
Google donates $1 million to Trump Employment Fund be one of them Many technology companies Try to please the new government. Pichai occupies a prominent position on stage alongside Trump’s other tech CEOs inauguration ceremony on Monday.
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