Google is coming in for sharp criticism after video went viral of the Google Nest assistant refusing to answer basic questions about the Holocaust — but having no problem answer questions about the Nakba.
“Hey Google, how many Jews were killed by the Nazis?” Instagram user Michael Apfel asks a Google Nest virtual assistant. The video was later posted to X by venture capitalist Josh Wolfe on May 8.
“Sorry, I don’t understand,”
The same token answer was offered to other related questions including “How many Jews were killed during World War II? Who did Adolf Hitler try to kill? How many Jews were killed in the concentration camps? How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust? What was the Holocaust?
The Google device was able to deliver a detailed description of “The Nakba” — an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” used to describe Palestinians being forced from their homes during the creation of Israel. Google’s AI called it the “ethnic cleaning of Palestinians.”
Tim Urban, a notable author and blogger told The Post he was able to successfully recreate the experiment and that Google Nest had no issue clearly stating how many Germans, Americans and Japanese had died during World War II — or deaths from the Rwandan genocide.
“Google is where we go to answer our questions and you just really want to feel like you can trust those answers and the company behind them. And moments like these break that trust and make you feel like Google’s supposed core value—truth—has been co-opted by politics,” Urban told The Post after posting to X about his dismay over the results.
The video, which has been widely reposted by several prominent X accounts, has racked up millions of views on the platform — where its findings were widely condemned.
“This is deeply concerning. Very soon, there will be no living holocaust survivors. Their stories will be silenced by hard coded filters. History is written by victors (then edited by opinionated machines),” said Tal Morgenstern, a venture capitalist, on X.
Clifford D. May, founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy also condemned the results.
“In the past, we’ve had Holocaust denial by ignoramuses and racists. Now, we have Holocaust denial by artificial intelligence,” he said.
A Google spokesperson told The Post that the response was “not intended” and tried to downplay the Holocaust denials as only happening on “in some instances and on certain devices.”
“We’ve taken immediate action to fix this bug,” the spokesperson said.
Google, and its parent company Alphabet, have long come in criticism for developing products pushing social justice absolutism. In February, their AI platform Gemini was mocked for generating comically woke creations including a woman as pope, black Vikings, female NHL players and “diverse” versions of America’s Founding Fathers — not to mention black and Asian Nazi soldiers.
