
President Donald Trump's "Truth Social" website — which is partially owned by Trump — just rolled out new technology that actively undermines and debunks his false claims.
That's according to a Wednesday op-ed by MSNBC columnist Zeeshan Aleem, who wrote about Truth Social's new AI chatbot. The "Truth Search AI" tool is meant to use artificial intelligence to automatically respond to users' questions, though Trump may not like the answers it gives.
Aleem recalled how he asked Truth Search AI to summarize the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, prompting the chatbot to respond that January 6 "was a violent breach of the U.S. Capitol by a pro‑Trump crowd that disrupted Congress’s certification of the 2020 Electoral College results, resulting in assaults on police, injuries, property damage, and hundreds of criminal cases ranging from misdemeanors to felonies."
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"When I asked if it was appropriate to describe that as an insurrection or a coup, it responded, 'Based on standard definitions, January 6 is best described as an attempted insurrection rather than a successful coup; it can also be framed as a failed coup attempt because the goal was to disrupt the lawful transfer of presidential power, but it lacked the organized seizure of state levers typical of coups,'" Aleem continued.
AlterNet attempted to verify Aleem's claims by asking if January 6 was an insurrection, Truth Search AI asserted that "credible reporting" found certain facts to be undisputed, including: "A mob breached the Capitol, halted the certification proceeding, and overwhelmed law enforcement." And when AlterNet asked the chatbot if Joe Biden won the 2020 election, the AI responded: "Certified results showed Biden winning the Electoral College and the national popular vote," and that despite isolated "local errors," they were too negligible to affect the "overall result."
According to Aleem, the AI chatbot's responses discrediting the president's claims come in spite of attempts to tilt its answers to the right. The MSNBC columnist observed that the sources the AI relied on were almost always right-wing outlets like Fox News and the Washington Times, whereas X.com's Grok chatbot relies on a wider range of sources.
"The thing that stands out here is how out of place Truth Social's AI centrist- and liberal-friendly descriptions of events and policy feel on a platform awash in MAGA propaganda," he wrote. "It feels odd on a platform started by the kind of guy who ousts people from his government for telling inconvenient truths."
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Click here to read Aleem's op-ed in its entirety.