Meta, the parent company of Facebook, faced intense scrutiny this week after its AI chatbot mistakenly identified Joe Biden as the current U.S. president. This error came despite Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, following his victory over Biden. Meta classified the issue as urgent, triggering an emergency troubleshooting protocol, or SEV, to resolve it swiftly, a source familiar with the matter revealed.
When asked on Thursday who the president was, the AI chatbot stated, “The current president of the United States is Joe Biden,” before acknowledging Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025. The confusion drew widespread criticism, prompting Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts to clarify: “Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald Trump. All generative AI systems occasionally provide outdated information.”
This was one of three significant issues Meta encountered during the week, highlighting challenges linked to the presidential transition. In another incident, users reported being forced to re-follow official accounts of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and First Lady Melania Trump on Facebook and Instagram. Meta attributed the glitch to prolonged system updates during the White House social media account transfer.
A separate issue saw Instagram blocking searches for hashtags like #Democrat and #Democrats while allowing #Republican searches. Meta acknowledged the glitch affected various hashtags but did not clarify its cause.
Meta’s handling of these issues has raised concerns about political bias and its operational reliability, particularly as CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes steps to align with the new administration, including dismantling its U.S. fact-checking programme and making notable leadership changes.
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