Former President Trump told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him to apologize. Facebook had wrongly mislabeled a now-viral photo of Trump.
The photo showed Trump raising a fist after a July 13 assassination attempt at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. It was labeled as misinformation.
"Mark Zuckerberg called me twice," Trump told Bartiromo. "He said that was really amazing, really brave. He announced he's not supporting a Democrat because he respected me for what I did."
"He actually apologized. He said they made a mistake and they're correcting it," Trump said. He added that Google never called him after their autocomplete function failed to show results for the assassination attempt.
Meta's VP of Global Policy, Joel Kaplan, explained the error in a statement. The AI detector tool mistook the photo for a doctored one, applying a fact-check label.
Kaplan said, "The fact-check label was initially and correctly applied to a doctored photo. Our systems mistakenly applied it to the real photo too. Our teams worked to correct this mistake quickly."
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone clarified that Zuckerberg has not endorsed any 2024 presidential candidate. He reiterated this on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Meta's AI chatbot initially refused to answer questions about the shooting. Kaplan noted the AI was overwhelmed by the breaking news situation.
Kaplan said, "We programmed Meta AI to not answer questions about the assassination attempt initially. We updated the responses, but we should have done it sooner."
Google's AI chatbot Gemini also refused to answer questions about the shooting. It told Fox News Digital, "I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now."
A Google spokesperson said Gemini was "responding as intended." They restrict election-related queries on Gemini.