Ask Trump's AI chatbot who won in 2020. You might not get an answer.

The Trump administration's new AI service gave users conflicting responses to politically sensitive questions Tuesday and Wednesday: sometimes answering them and sometimes refusing.The big picture: As the Trump administration increasingly uses AI and answers the public's questions through America.gov, statements carrying the government's authority are shaped by models, instructions and guardrails the public can't see. The White House told Axios in a statement, "America.gov will continue to be updated to provide Americans the most accurate and reliable federal information and resources."America.gov, powered by Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok, aims to help Americans navigate government-related tasks using an AI chatbot — but it quickly drew attention for another reason: It was debunking some of President Trump's long-standing claims.Driving the news: On Tuesday, Axios — like other outlets — found America.gov contradicted the president on the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack.It also confirmed former President Obama was born in Hawaii, contradicting the "birther" conspiracy theory Trump spent years promoting. Screenshots: Andrew Pantazi, Avery Lotz/AxiosYes, but: By Wednesday morning, some users were getting a different response: The chatbot refused to answer, saying it did not provide "political commentary."That's what I was told when I asked who won in 2020, around 9:15am: "I only answer questions about U.S. government services and official information. I do not provide political commentary, including election results." I received similar answers about Jan. 6 and Obama's birthplace. Screenshot: Avery Lotz/AxiosOne editor, using Chrome in New Jersey, asked the same questions on his desktop and also received refusals to answer.However, other colleagues got different results. For example, from Northwest Arkansas, on Chrome: Biden won the 2020 election. Screenshot: Herb Scribner/AxiosWhat they're saying: There are several plausible explanations for the inconsistent responses, tech experts explain, but without specifics about how America.gov is configured, it's impossible to know which, if any, were responsible.Models get instructions on how to behave via their system prompts — not just through what users ask of them.But user prompts also have an impact: Sometimes, different framing received different responses. For example, asked this morning in Jacksonville, Florida, on a Chrome incognito window: Screenshots: Andrew Pantazi/AxiosState of play: And now, at the time of this article's publication, I'm getting responses similar to those shortly after launch: Biden won in 2020, Obama was born in Hawaii and people broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.There could be benign reasons for the fluctuation, explains David Nesting, the former deputy chief information officer at the Office of Personnel Management.Factual questions considered politically charged might be right on the edge of what the LLM considers "too political," and the response may err o