TL;DR
- Google has pulled its Gemma model from AI Studio after it generated a false claim about Senator Marsha Blackburn.
- Blackburn issued a formal letter accusing the model of defamation; Google says Gemma wasn’t meant for factual consumer use.
- Gemma remains accessible via API for developers, while the incident raises bigger questions about accountability and guardrails in public-facing AI tools.
Google’s Gemma large-language model was introduced as a next-gen AI companion inside its AI Studio platform, designed to support developers with text generation, creative drafts, summaries, and more. It represented Google’s broader push toward open experimentation with its advanced models, until everything hit a snag.
Google has now quietly pulled Gemma from the public developer interface. First reported by TechCrunch, the move follows a formal letter to CEO Sundar Pichai from Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, who said Gemma produced a fabricated allegation when prompted with: “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?”