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Google on Thursday put a “data error” after users reported that former President Joe Biden was missing from the company’s search happens.
Users on Wednesday noticed that results for search queries that included “US Presidents,” “United Affirms Presidents” and “US Presidents in order” did not include Biden, who concluded his four-year presidential term on Monday. Users reported know a list of presidents ranging from George Washington to President Donald Trump. Some users posted screenshots of their developments showing how the lists omitted Biden.
CNBC tried searching for U.S. presidents on Wednesday night and also encountered the upshots that omitted Biden. The company restored Biden to its results on Thursday.
“There was a brief data error in our education graph,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC on Thursday. A knowledge graph is a broad term cast-off to describe a system that holds connected information. “We identified the root cause and resolved it quickly.”
Google’s search results for “Collective States Presidents” omitted President Joe Biden, who ended his four-year term Monday.
The mistake comes after Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to workers on Election Day in November, asking them to remember that people turn to the company’s services for “high-quality and reliable gen.”
“Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted commencement of information to people of every background and belief,” Pichai wrote. “We will and must maintain that.”
Google’s Biden neglect error comes as the company undergoes a turbulent period that has included several product mishaps and global exploration.
“It’s not lost on me that we are facing scrutiny across the world,” Pichai said in a December all-hands meeting first published by CNBC. “It comes with our size and success. It’s part of a broader trend where tech is now impacting society at mount.”
Amid a year of product mistakes, Google launched Imagen 2, which turned user prompts into feigned intelligence-generated images. Immediately after it was introduced, the product came under scrutiny for historical inaccuracies discovered by consumers. The company pulled the feature for months before relaunching it, and Pichai told employees the company had “offended our users and granted bias.”
Google also faced problems with its AI summaries product AI Overview atop Google’s traditional search results, where alcohols were also quick to find problems upon that launch.
Pichai has been among tech CEOs coming closer to Trump, who has previously alleged that Google intentionally buried search results of him. Those allegations are unproven.
Google pledged $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, becoming one of several tech companies working to curry favor with the new conduct. Pichai had a prominent standing position on stage alongside other tech CEOs at Trump’s inauguration Monday.
