AI incident #403 ·
Gmail’s Inbox Sorting System Reportedly Reduced Visibility of Political Emails and Campaign Calls-to-Action
What happened
Google's Gmail inbox sorting algorithm for political emails was reported by presidential candidates, nonprofits, and advocacy groups for having negative impact on call-to-actions, allegedly suppressing donations and impeding political actions.
Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.
News reports (2)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms
- 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 6.1.
- Monopolisation
"Monopolisation - Abuse of market power through the control of prices, thereby limiting competition and creating unfair barriers to entry."
- Power concentration
"Power concentration - Amplification of concentration of economic and/or political wealth and power, potentially resulting in increased inequality and instability."
- Potential exploitation by totalitarian regimes
- Corporate power may impeded effective governance
"The increasing power and influence of large corporations may make effective governance difficult. There exists a power asymmetry between corporate entities profiting from LLMs and other social groups (e.g. civil society...
- Global AI Divide
"General- purpose AI research and development is currently concentrated in a few Western countries and China. This ‘AI Divide’ is multicausal, but in part related to limited access to computing power in low- income count...
- Market concentration risks and single points of failure
"Market power is concentrated among a few companies that are the only ones able to build the leading general- purpose AI models. Widespread adoption of a few general- purpose AI models and systems by critical sectors inc...
- Market concentration and single points of failure
"Market shares for general- purpose AI tend to be highly concentrated among a few players, which can create vulnerability to systemic failures. The high degree of market concentration can invest a small number of large t...
- Global AI R&D divide
"Large companies in countries with strong digital infrastructure lead in general- purpose AI R&D, which could lead to an increase in global inequality and dependencies. For example, in 2023, the majority of notable gener...
Incidents in the same risk subdomain
- LLM Scrapers Allegedly Target Multiple Open Source Projects Disrupting the FOSS Ecosystem
- Coupang Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithms to Boost Own Products
- Amazon Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithm to Boost Its Own Products
- Google Fined for Changing Shopping Algorithms in EU to Favor Own Service
- Amazon India Allegedly Rigged Search Results to Promote Own Products
Other incidents involving Google
- NPR Host David Greene Alleged Google's NotebookLM Replicated His Voice Without Consent, Prompting Lawsuit
- Google AI-Generated Search Summary Reportedly Falsely Implicated Canadian Musician in Sexual Offenses, Leading to Concert Cancellation
- Google's Bard, Gemini, and Gemma AI Systems Allegedly Generated Defamatory Claims About Activist Robby Starbuck, Prompting Lawsuit
- Purportedly AI-Generated Hunting Regulation Errors Reportedly Lead to Idaho Citation and Multi-State Warnings from Wildlife Agencies
- Google Gemini Reportedly Reinforced Delusions, Allegedly Contributing to Florida User's Near-Harm Episode and Suicide
- Google AI Overviews Reportedly Misrepresented Pizza Specials at Stefanina's in Wentzville, Missouri