Trump Targets Google Gemini 'Woke' Row, Pichai Calls It 'Unacceptable'

• Trump's executive order bars "woke AI" from federal contracts, indirectly targeting Google's Gemini bias scandal.
• Sundar Pichai called Gemini's biased responses "completely unacceptable" and vowed full-scale structural reforms.

President Donald Trump's administration recently issued executive orders to prevent 'woke AI in the federal government'. The White House's communication, which did not name the company or the AI chatbot, cited last year's controversy surrounding Google's Gemini chatbot, to which both CEO Sundar Pichai and the company's chief technologist Prabhakar Raghavan publicly responded.

The executive order, signed on July 23, states that "ideological biases or social agendas are built into AI models, they can distort the quality and accuracy of the output." It identifies "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) as a "pervasive and destructive" ideology that, in the context of AI, can lead to the "suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex," "manipulation of racial or sexual representation," and the incorporation of concepts such as critical race theory and systemic racism.

How Trump's 'Woke AI' order poked fun at Google Gemini's Woke controversy

The White House order stated that DEI poses an existential threat to reliable AI.

"For example, when prompted for images, one major AI model changed the race or sex of historical figures — including the Pope, the Founding Fathers, and Vikings — because it was trained to prioritize DEI requirements over accuracy," the White House communication stated.

"Another AI model refused to create images celebrating white people's achievements, despite complying with the same request for people of other races. In another case, an AI model stated that a user should not'misgender' another person, even if it means preventing a nuclear apocalypse," it added.

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What was the controversy surrounding Google Gemini?

A controversy erupted after user @EndWokeness' viral post on X (formerly Twitter) showed Gemini generating images of diverse racial backgrounds when asked for historical figures such as American Founding Fathers and popes. It also reportedly depicted Nazis as racially diverse.

These are some of the examples that elicited strong criticism, including from figures such as Elon Musk, who called Gemini's output "racist" and Google "woke."

"The woke mind virus is destroying Western civilization." Google does the same thing with its search results. There's also Facebook and Instagram. "And Wikipedia," he added.

What Google CEO Sundar Pichai said:

Following widespread criticism, Google was forced to pause its Gemini AI image generator. Pichai publicly responded to the backlash, saying, "Unacceptable, we got it wrong." He also stated that the company is building the feature from the ground up and addressing the issues.

Raghavan acknowledged that some generated images were "inaccurate or even offensive" and that Gemini occasionally "overcompensates" in its pursuit of diversity. He blamed the "overcompensation" on Google's efforts to avoid AI's classic pitfalls of stereotypical portrayal, but admitted that their "tuning... failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range."

Google released Imagen 3 later, claiming significant improvements over its predecessor.