Google has pulled its Gemma AI model from the company’s developer platform, AI Studio, after U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn accused the system of fabricating false sexual misconduct claims against her.
In a post on X, Google said Gemma had been “misused by non-developers” and was “never intended as a consumer tool.” The company said the model remains available through an API for approved developers and researchers.
The move follows Blackburn’s letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in which she said Gemma falsely claimed she was accused of rape and linked to nonexistent news reports. “There has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual, and there are no such news stories,” Blackburn wrote.
Google acknowledged that AI hallucinations—false or misleading outputs—remain a challenge, particularly for smaller open models like Gemma. “We remain committed to minimizing hallucinations and continually improving all our models,” the company said.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly accused major AI firms of political bias, with President Donald Trump earlier this year signing an executive order banning so-called “woke AI.”
The controversy underscores the growing risk of misinformation and defamation from open AI systems, even as companies like Google position smaller models such as Gemma as efficient alternatives to large-scale models like Gemini 2.5 Pro.
