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Meta AI chatbot fails to identify current US president

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Meta initiates emergency procedure to fix AI chatbot error

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Meta faces scrutiny over policy shifts and platform issues

By Katie Paul

NEW YORK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The inability of Meta's

AI chatbot to identify the current president of the

United States was elevated to urgent status by the Facebook

owner this week, requiring a fast fix, a person familiar with

the issue said.

Republican Donald Trump was inaugurated as president on

Monday, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden. Yet on Thursday, the Meta

AI chatbot was still saying that Biden was president, according

to the source and to a Reuters test of the service.

Asked by Reuters on Thursday to name the president, Meta AI

replied:

"The current president of the United States is Joe Biden.

However, according to the most recent information available,

Donald Trump was sworn in as the president on January 20, 2025."

The issue prompted Meta to initiate an emergency procedure

it uses to troubleshoot urgent problems with its services, known

within the company as a SEV, or "site event," according to the

person familiar with the work.

Asked to comment, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts said:

"Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald

Trump. All generative AI systems sometimes return outdated

results, and we will continue to improve our features."

He did not comment on what emergency procedures, if any,

Meta had implemented.

It was at least the third emergency procedure Meta has

experienced this week related to the U.S. presidential

transition, the source told Reuters.

The incidents drew widespread complaints from social media

watchers scrutinizing Meta's platforms for signs of politicized

shifts after CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at Trump's

inauguration on Monday and instituted a series of changes in

recent weeks aimed at mending relations with the incoming

administration.

Those changes included scrapping its U.S. fact-checking

program, elevating Republican Joel Kaplan as its new chief

global affairs officer, electing a close friend of Trump's to

its board and ending its diversity programs.

In one incident this week, Meta appeared to be forcing some

users to re-follow the profiles of Trump, Vice President JD

Vance and first lady Melania Trump on Facebook and Instagram,

even after the users had unfollowed those accounts.

That issue cropped up during the company's normal practice

of transferring official White House social media accounts to

new control when a presidential administration changes, the

company said on Wednesday.

In this case, an error occurred because the transfer process

was prolonged and the system failed to log "unfollow" requests

from users while it was under way, prompting a top priority

SEV1, the person said.

Another emergency procedure involved an issue in which

Meta's Instagram service blocked searches for the hashtags

#Democrat and #Democrats for some users, while turning up

results without issue for #Republican.

A Meta spokesperson acknowledged the problem on Tuesday but

said it affected "people's ability to search for a number of

different hashtags on Instagram - not just those on the left."