NEW YORK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Meta's AI chatbot's failure to recognize the current U.S. president was urgently addressed by the Facebook parent company this week, as per a source familiar with the matter.
Despite Republican assuming office on Monday, replacing Democrat Joe Biden, the Meta AI chatbot still mistakenly identified Biden as president on Thursday, according to the source and a test by Reuters.
In response to a query by Reuters regarding the president, Meta AI responded:
The current president of the United States is Joe Biden. However, according to the most recent information available, Donald Trump was sworn in as president on January 20, 2025.
The issue led Meta to initiate an emergency procedure known internally as a SEV (Site Event) to troubleshoot critical service problems, the source confirmed.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts commented, stating, Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald Trump. All generative AI systems may sometimes provide outdated information, and we are committed to enhancing our features.
Roberts did not specify the emergency measures Meta had undertaken.
This incident marked at least the third emergency response by Meta this week concerning the U.S. presidential transition, according to the source.
The disruptions prompted criticism on social media, with observers scrutinizing Meta's platforms for signs of political bias following CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance at Trump's inauguration and recent moves aimed at repairing relations with the new administration.
These changes included appointing , a former aide to Trump, as its new chief global affairs officer, and adding to its board.
Among the incidents, Meta mistakenly linked the profiles of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and First Lady Melania Trump on Facebook and Instagram, despite users unfollowing those accounts.
This occurred during the routine transfer of official White House social media accounts to new administrators during a presidential turnover, Meta explained on Wednesday, attributing the mishap to a prolonged transfer process that failed to register user "unfollow" requests in real-time, triggering an urgent SEV1 response.
Another emergency response focused on Instagram, which inadvertently blocked searches for the hashtags #Democrat and #Democrats for some users while allowing #Republican searches without issue.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the issue on Tuesday, clarifying it impacted various hashtag searches on Instagram, not just those associated with left-leaning groups.