Google Search Reportedly Returned Fewer Results for Abortion Services in Rural Areas

News reports (1)

Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.

1. 23 Feb 2022
   Googling for Abortion: Search Engine Mediation of Abortion Accessibility in the United States

   arxiv.org · Yelena Mejova, Tatiana Gracyk, Ronald E. Robertson · AIID #2273

Who was involved

Alleged deployer

Google

On AIID: Google

Alleged developer

Google

On AIID: Google

Alleged harmed party

Women seeking abortion services women having unexpected or crisis pregnancies Women and girls Women Pregnant women Pregnant patients Pregnant individuals Patients

On AIID: Women seeking abortion services, women having unexpected or crisis pregnancies, Women and girls, Women, Pregnant women, Pregnant patients, Pregnant individuals, Patients

AI systems implicated

Google SearchGoogle

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Risk domain

Discrimination and Toxicity

Risk subdomain

1.3 Unequal performance across groups

Causal entity

AI

Intent

Unintentional

Timing

Post-deployment

Harm level

—

Sectors

—

Countries

—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 1.3.

• Bias and discrimination (value embedding)

  "Generative AI models may also be subject to the “value embedding” phenomenon.361 “Value embedding” refers to the fact that developers of generative AI models strive to minimize biased outputs by retraining their models...

  Regulating under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI (G'sell2024)

• Impact on affected communities

  "It is important to include the perspectives or concerns of communities that are affected by model outcomes when designing and building models. Failing to include these perspectives makes it difficult to understand the r...

  AI Risk Atlas (IBM2025)

• Unfair capability distribution

  "Performing worse for some groups than others in a way that harms the worse-off group"

  A Closer Look at the Existing Risks of Generative AI: Mapping the Who, What, and How of Real-World Incidents (Li2025)

• Disparate Performance

  The LLM’s performances can differ significantly across different groups of users. For example, the question-answering capability showed significant performance differences across different racial and social status groups...

  Trustworthy LLMs: A Survey and Guideline for Evaluating Large Language Models’ Alignment (Liu2024)

• Fairness

  Avoiding bias and ensuring no disparate performance

  Trustworthy LLMs: A Survey and Guideline for Evaluating Large Language Models’ Alignment (Liu2024)

• Ideological Homogenization from Value Embedding

  "The increasing integration of general purpose AI models into every-day life raises concerns around their embedded normative values. The reach of a small number of AI models to a large number of people around the world c...

  Governing General Purpose AI: A Comprehensive Map of Unreliability, Misuse and Systemic Risks (Maham2023 )

• Fairness

  This challenge appears when the learning model leads to a decision that is biased to some sensitive attributes... data itself could be biased, which results in unfair decisions. Therefore, this problem should be solved o...

  A Survey of Artificial Intelligence Challenges: Analyzing the Definitions, Relationships, and Evolutions (Saghiri2022)

• Quality-of-Service Harms

  "These harms occur when algorithmic systems disproportionately underperform for certain groups of people along social categories of difference such as disability, ethnicity, gender identity, and race."

  Sociotechnical Harms of Algorithmic Systems: Scoping a Taxonomy for Harm Reduction (Shelby2023)

Related incidents on the AI Incident Database

Linked by AIID editors or by its text-similarity model.

• 21 Jul 2016Common Biases of Vector Embeddings
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• 23 May 2016Northpointe Risk Models

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

• 27 Feb 2026Washington State DOL's AI Phone System Reportedly Failed to Provide Spanish-Language Service to Callers Requesting Spanish
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• 11 Oct 2024Infinite Campus AI-Driven Student Risk Model Leads to Cuts in Support for Nevada's Low-Income Schools
• 6 Oct 2024Police Use of Facial Recognition Software Causes Wrongful Arrests Without Defendant Knowledge
• 23 Jun 2024Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Algorithm Wrongly Flags 200,000 for Housing Benefit Fraud
• 25 May 2024Facewatch Reported to Have Wrongfully Flagged Home Bargains Customer as Shoplifter

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• 23 Jan 2026NPR Host David Greene Alleged Google's NotebookLM Replicated His Voice Without Consent, Prompting Lawsuit
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• 22 Oct 2025Google's Bard, Gemini, and Gemma AI Systems Allegedly Generated Defamatory Claims About Activist Robby Starbuck, Prompting Lawsuit
• 15 Oct 2025Purportedly AI-Generated Hunting Regulation Errors Reportedly Lead to Idaho Citation and Multi-State Warnings from Wildlife Agencies
• 29 Sep 2025Google Gemini Reportedly Reinforced Delusions, Allegedly Contributing to Florida User's Near-Harm Episode and Suicide
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