Meta AI overlooks Trump, names Joe Biden as US President; company initiates ‘emergency procedure’

Meta AI chatbot has been embroiled in a controversy after naming Joe Biden as the current President of the United States. Notably, Republican Donald Trump took oath as the 47th US President on 20 January but the AI chatbot from Meta still named his predecessor when asked about the current US President.

As per a Reuters report, Meta AI when asked a question about the current President of the US said, "The current president of the United States is Joe Biden. However, according to the most recent information available, Donald Trump was sworn in as the president on January 20, 2025."

Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts, while acknowledging the issue, said that generative AI systems are prone to returning outdated information sometimes. He told Reuters, "Everyone knows the President of the United States is Donald Trump. All generative AI systems sometimes return outdated results, and we will continue to improve our features.”

Meta initiates emergency action:

Meta reportedly initiated an ‘emergency procedure’ to troubleshoot urgent problems with its services, known as a ‘site event’ or SET within the company.

However, this wasn't the first emergency procedure enacted since Trump took oath. The Reuters report citing a source within the company, stated that the Instagram parent has had to implement these protocols atleast thrice in the last few days.

In one of those cases, Meta was reportedly seen to forcing some users to re-follow the profiles of President Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Facebook and Instagram despite them having unfollowed these accounts.

In another instance, Instagram reportedly blocked searches for the hashtags #Democrat and #Democrats for certain users. However, results for the #Republican did not face any similar issue.