{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2025/11/technology/icymi-in-techcrunch-google-pulls-gemma-from-ai-studio-after-senator-blackburn-accuses-model-of-defamation", "ICYMI in TechCrunch: Google Pulls Gemma from AI Studio After Senator Blackburn Accuses Model of Defamation", "2025-11-03", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "Senate", "TN", "Marsha Blackburn", "B001243", "www.blackburn.senate.gov", "blackburn", "https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/news/cc8c80c1-d564-4bbb-93a4-f1d772346ae0", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) released the following statement after Google reportedly removed Gemma from its AI studio following a letter Senator Blackburn sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai demanding answers after Gemma manufactured fake criminal allegations against her:\n\n\u201cGoogle has a long history of targeting, censoring, and smearing conservatives, and Gemma\u2019s so-called \u2018hallucinations\u2019 are both dangerous and deeply concerning,\u201d said Senator Blackburn. \u201cIt is absolutely unacceptable that Google did not prevent its large language model from pulling heinous criminal allegations out of thin air and presenting them as fact to unknowing users. Google owes the American people answers, and I will be eagerly awaiting the company\u2019s response to my letter.\u201d\n\nGoogle pulls Gemma from AI Studio after Senator Blackburn accuses model of defamation\n\nAnthony Ha\n\nTechCrunch\n\nGoogle says it has removed Gemma from its AI Studio after a U.S. senator accused the AI model of fabricating accusations of sexual misconduct against her.\n\nIn a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Marsha Blackburn \u2014 a Republican from Tennessee \u2014 said that when Gemma was asked, \u201cHas Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?\u201d it responded by falsely claiming that during a 1987 state senate campaign, a state trooper alleged that Blackburn \u201cpressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone of this is true, not even the campaign year which was actually 1998,\u201d Blackburn wrote. While there are links to news articles that supposedly support these claims, she said, \u201cThe links lead to error pages and unrelated news articles. There has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual, and there are no such news stories.\u201d\n\nThe letter also said that during a recent Senate Commerce hearing, Blackburn brought up conservative activist Robby Starbuck\u2019s lawsuit against Google, in which Starbuck claims Google\u2019s AI models (including Gemma) generated defamatory claims about him being a \u201cchild rapist\u201d and \u201cserial sexual abuser.\u201d\n\nAs recounted in Blackburn\u2019s letter, Google\u2019s Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy Markham Erickson responded that hallucinations are a known issue and Google is \u201cworking hard to mitigate them.\u201d\n\nBlackburn\u2019s letter argued that on the contrary, Gemma\u2019s fabrications are \u201cnot a harmless \u2018hallucination,\u2019\u201d but rather \u201can act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model.\u201d\n\n\u2026\n\nIn a Friday night post on X, Google did not reference the specifics of Blackburn\u2019s letter, but the company said it\u2019s \u201cseen reports of non-developers trying to use Gemma in AI Studio and ask it factual questions.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe never intended this to be a consumer tool or model, or to be used this way,\u201d the company said. (Google promotes Gemma as a family of open, lightweight models that developers can integrate into their own products, while AI Studio is the company\u2019s web-based development environment for AI-powered apps.)\n\nAs a result, Google said it\u2019s removing Gemma from AI Studio while continuing to make the models available via API.\n\nTechCrunch has reached out to Google for additional comment.\n\nRELATED\n\nBlackburn Demands Answers from Google After Gemma Manufactured Fake Criminal Allegations Against Her", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2025/11/technology/icymi-in-techcrunch-google-pulls-gemma-from-ai-studio-after-senator-blackburn-accuses-model-of-defamation"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6857141852378845, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}