Voters Are Turning to AI for Election Help. The Answers Aren't Always Right

After years of Google restricting Gemini’s ability to answer users’ questions about major elections, the tech giant is shifting tactics. Google announced Wednesday that the company would add credible election information about the upcoming midterms—including details about where and how to vote—to its Gemini app, along with AI-generated responses in its search products. The company said it would share information on polling locations and voter registration instructions from state and local governments and the voting information group, Democracy Works, along with race results from The Associated Press.As Gemini wades deeper into politics, the risk of the chatbot giving voters misleading, biased, or outdated election information will only grow. A Pew Research Center study earlier this year found about half of adults under 50 rely on chatbots to search for information, while a smaller share use them to read news. “We know that voters are going to turn to chatbots more and more,” said Valeria de la Fuente, a digital research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who recently co-authored a report on election-related misinformation from chatbots. “So the quality of the responses...