U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) escalated her battle with Big Tech this week, sending a blistering follow-up letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai regarding the tech giant’s “Gemma” artificial intelligence model. The confrontation centers on the AI’s fabrication of serious criminal allegations against the Senator, including false claims involving rape and child abuse.
Blackburn contends that Google’s response to the issue—labeling the falsehoods as technical “hallucinations”—is an attempt to dodge accountability for a product she describes as a “catastrophic failure of oversight.”
The dispute stems from a recent discovery that Gemma, Google’s open-weight language model, generated fake news articles linking Blackburn and conservative activist Robby Starbuck to unsubstantiated crimes. When specifically asked, “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?” the model manufactured links to nonexistent news stories confirming the accusation.
READ: Tennessee Sen. Blackburn Looks To Shield American Farmland From Taxpayer-Funded Solar Projects
In her latest correspondence, Blackburn dismissed Google’s defense that removing Gemma from the Google AI Studio platform was a sufficient fix. She argues that because Gemma is a “developer model” rather than a closed consumer product, the underlying code—and its errors—has already been exported and integrated into countless third-party applications.
“Removing Gemma from AI Studio does nothing to prevent those developers from continuing to deploy and distribute variations of the same model,” Blackburn wrote. “In other words, the model that produced the defamatory content has not been contained. It continues to be re-packaged and re-distributed across platforms you do not control but which your company enables.”
The Senator points to the widespread reach of the model, noting it has been downloaded by more than 200 million users, creating a ripple effect of misinformation that she believes disproportionately targets conservatives.
Key to Blackburn’s argument is the discrepancy between Google’s products. She noted that when the same queries are run through “Gemini,” Google’s flagship consumer AI, the model does not fabricate these criminal allegations. According to Blackburn, this proves the company possesses the safeguards to prevent defamation but failed to apply them to Gemma.
READ: California Rep. Garcia Warns AG Pam Bondi Against Using ‘Loophole’ To Hide Epstein Files
“This is not simply a technical glitch,” Blackburn stated. “It is an admission that Google intentionally released a model without the safeguards that Google already knows how to implement.”
The letter concludes with a stark ultimatum for the Silicon Valley executive: if the company cannot prevent its tools from smearing public figures with heinous allegations, the tools shouldn’t exist.
“My message is simple: Shut your AI models down completely until you can control them,” Blackburn demanded. “The American public deserves AI systems that are accurate, fair and transparent — not tools that smear conservatives with manufactured criminal allegations.”
Please make a small donation to the Tampa Free Press to help sustain independent journalism. Your contribution enables us to continue delivering high-quality, local, and national news coverage.
Sign up: Subscribe to our free newsletter for a curated selection of top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
