America.gov chatbot altered mid-launch after Biden 2020 reply

The Trump administration's new AI portal, America.gov, launched Tuesday and within minutes was telling users that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, that the 22nd Amendment barred Trump from a third term because he had "already been elected twice (2016 and 2024)," and that recent warming stems "largely from human greenhouse-gas emissions." Fortune reported that during Trump's own remarks at the launch event, those answers began changing. By the time the AP asked again about 2020, the site refused, citing "political questions," a category it now extends to impeachment and felony convictions.

The chatbot searches roughly 29,000 federal, state and local government sites, and according to U.S. Chief Design Officer and Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, it runs on Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok. Asked to confirm as much itself, the bot was less forthcoming: "I do not publish which language models power America." The National Design Studio behind the build operates through the General Services Administration and is staffed with several alumni of DOGE, including head of engineering Edward Coristine, known online as "Big Balls," and engineer Akash Bobba. The roughly 30-person team has no machine-learning engineer.

Trump signed an executive order the same day directing federal agencies to integrate their public-facing services with America.gov. Phase 2, slated for 2027, is meant to let users apply for passports, enroll in Medicare, and access student-loan information, sensitive personal data flowing through the same stack whose launch-day answers were being rewritten in front of the room.