Google announced it has removed its Gemma AI model from its AI Studio platform after receiving a letter from U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn accusing the model of fabricating defamatory accusations against her.
In a letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Blackburn (R-TN) stated that when Gemma was prompted with the question, “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?” it generated a false and detailed story. The AI’s response claimed that during a 1987 state senate campaign, a state trooper alleged Blackburn “pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts.”
Blackburn wrote in her letter, “None of this is true, not even the campaign year which was actually 1998… There has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual, and there are no such news stories.” She noted that the links Gemma provided as “sources” led to error pages or unrelated articles.
Blackburn’s letter argued this was “not a harmless ‘hallucination,'” but rather “an act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model.”
This incident follows a recent Senate Commerce hearing where Blackburn confronted Google’s Vice President for Government Affairs, Markham Erickson, about a separate lawsuit from conservative activist Robby Starbuck. Starbuck’s lawsuit claims Google’s AI models, including Gemma, generated defamatory claims about him, such as being a “child rapist” and “serial sexual abuser.” At the hearing, Erickson responded that hallucinations are a known issue and Google is “working hard to mitigate them.”
In her letter, Blackburn echoed complaints from supporters of President Donald Trump about a “consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Google’s AI systems.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday night, Google did not directly reference Senator Blackburn’s letter. However, the company stated it had “seen reports of non-developers trying to use Gemma in AI Studio and ask it factual questions.” Google clarified its position, stating, “We never intended this to be a consumer tool or model, or to be used this way.”
Gemma is available via an API and was also available via AI Studio, which is a developer tool (in fact to use it you need to attest you're a developer). We’ve now seen reports of non-developers trying to use Gemma in AI Studio and ask it factual questions. We never intended this…
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) November 1, 2025
As a result, Google has removed Gemma from the web-based AI Studio but will continue to make the lightweight models available to developers through its API.
