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WIRED
18 minutes ago
- WIRED
Truth Social's New AI Chatbot Is Donald Trump's Media Diet Incarnate
Aug 8, 2025 6:20 PM Truth Search AI appears to rely heavily on conservative outlet Fox News to answer even the most basic questions. New York, USA - January 24, 2014: Fox News Channel Truck parked on New York street, USA Photograph: Anouchka/Getty Images When I ask the new Truth Social AI chatbot about navigating bias in the media ecosystem, it gives what I view as pretty reasonable advice. 'Diversify your sources,' it responds. 'Rely on news outlets across the political spectrum, including those from both left-leaning and right-leaning perspectives.' This is advice that the AI itself may not be taking to heart. For instance, to come to the above answer it cites five sources, four of which are Fox News articles. The fifth, inexplicably, is a 400-page report from US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr's Health and Human Services Department titled 'Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria.' Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group launched the chatbot, called 'Truth Search AI,' on Wednesday. The bot is powered by Perplexity AI, a search engine that answers questions using large language models and live web search. The company has garnered investments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former Coinbase CTO and influential investor Balaji Srinivasan. In 2024, WIRED published an article detailing how Perplexity had been scraping parts of websites that developers did not want it to access, in violation of the widely accepted web standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol. It was also prone to making stuff up, a WIRED analysis showed. While Perplexity's AI draws from sources on the left and center, the Truth Search AI version never cited a center or left-leaning source in dozens of tests conducted by WIRED. In fact, the chatbot highlighted only seven sources in total in response to my queries—Fox News, Fox Business, The Washington Times, The Epoch Times, Breitbart, Newsmax and This was true even for innocuous, non-political questions. When I ask the bot 'What is 30 times 30?' It sourced its answer from a Fox Business article called 'Inflation Reduction Act estimated to induce mortality 30 times more than COVID.' Similar tests by Axios and the Verge also show this extreme bias towards conservative media. 'What you are noticing is one feature known as 'source selection,'' Perplexity representative Jesse Dwyer says when I ask about Truth Search AI exclusively pulling from conservative sources. 'Source selection can take any number of forms for any number of needs, from internal documentation within an organization, custom data sets, or, as in the case you describe, domain filtering. This is their choice for their audience, and we are committed to developer and consumer choice.' He adds that Perplexity 'does not discriminate against any developers for any political reasons,' and emphasizes that they 'do not claim their AI is 100 percent accurate.' The Truth Search AI seems to be in denial about its own apparent biases, however. 'Yes, I source information from left wing, centrist, and right wing news outlets depending on the nature of the user's query and what sources are returned in the search results,' it responds, when I ask it whether it ever uses sources from center or left wing outlets. 'My responses are designed to critically analyze and synthesize information from all credible perspectives to ensure accuracy and balance.' This answer is sourced from five Fox Business articles. (The AI seems to max out at five sources per response.) While chatbots never answer a question the same way twice, it consistently maintained the claim that it drew from sources across the political spectrum. Given its seemingly steady diet of Fox News, I'm a little surprised that the bot answers some questions as even-handedly as it does. It denies that the 2020 election was stolen, for instance, in direct opposition to president Donald Trump's claims. On foreign immigration to the US, it says that the overall effect is mixed, 'but tends towards positive,' and adds that deporting all unauthorized immigrants would lead to 'a loss of $133 billion over the next decade for Social Security, requiring tax increases to compensate.' I expect the bot to fawn over Trump, but it gives a relatively tepid review of his presidency thus far, describing 'sweeping executive action,' but negative approval ratings 'with particular voter discontent on the economy and inflation.' Some of these more liberal-leaning answers cite Associated Press articles that have been republished on the Fox News website. Trump Media and Technology Group did not respond to inquiries about the AI. But the limits of Truth Search AI's exclusively conservative source pool come into focus when I press it on Trump's well-documented connection to financier-pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In spite of reporting to the contrary, it describes the connection as 'tenuous,' and says there is 'no credible evidence in the search results' that The Daily Beast published an article referencing a tape in which Jeffrey Epstein described Trump as 'his closest friend.' It's a different answer than the one given by Perplexity AI, which does locate and reference this article, using sourcing from the Daily Beast article itself, Yahoo News, Vox and the Yale Review. The sourcing for the Truth Search AI answer? Four articles from Fox News and one from Breitbart.
Politico
40 minutes ago
- Politico
Lessons from the rise and fall of Biden's IRA
Three years ago next Saturday, Democrats were celebrating what looked like a once-in-a-generation victory: President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, unlocking hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy and climate projects. The idea behind the United States' biggest-ever climate law wasn't just to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Democrats hoped to secure long-term support for programs to boost production of clean cars and electricity and rebuild American manufacturing. Factories in states like Tennessee and Ohio would turn back U.S. reliance on China. Lawmakers of both parties would see jobs and money flow to their districts — and have a powerful incentive to keep the tide from ebbing. Today, many of those hopes appear in tatters. President Donald Trump is moving to reverse, rescind or repurpose as much IRA spending as he can, aided by a Republican Congress whose moderates have offered no meaningful resistance. He's wielding every lever of power to promote a vision of economic growth based on tariffs, artificial intelligence and fossil fuels. The speed of the political whiplash is a reminder of how quickly power can fade and seemingly historic achievements can be reversed. It also leaves Democrats pondering how — or whether — they could restore their policies if the 2028 election goes their way. Real-life power switchWhen the IRA passed in 2022, Democrats entered the upcoming campaign season buoyed by the victory. But, as it turned out, they had not cracked the more important puzzle: How do you sell a big, expensive policy to the American people? FIRST: Then-candidate Donald Trump made repealing the IRA a central theme of his campaign. Democrats barely mentioned it. In 2023, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was betting that the Inflation Reduction Act would be a political asset for Democrats in 2024, embracing the law's economic, health care and energy provisions as proof of delivering results. Yet when the election season came, Trump vowed to rescind any unspent IRA funds if reelected. SECOND: Sending money to GOP districts hasn't won political protection. Democrats and industry allies believed the law's widespread economic impact and job creation — especially in Republican-led areas — would make dismantling its incentives politically difficult, and even some Republicans agreed initially. In the end, that didn't stop the GOP megabill from taking a 'sledgehammer' to the act in July, aggressively terminating or phasing out many clean energy tax credits. THIRD: The courts may not block reversals, even for funds under contract. Trump's vow to yank 'unspent' IRA dollars is being tested in court. A ruling expected any day in a case involving the National Institutes of Health could determine whether recipients of climate-related IRA grants must go to federal claims court, which has limited authority. The venue change would further cement Trump's power to cancel projects midstream. As the IRA turns three, the law's bigger lesson may be about political half-lives: Massive policy victories don't always fade slowly. Sometimes, the switch flips fast. It's Friday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Francisco 'A.J.' Camacho. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to acamacho@ Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: Gloria Gonzalez breaks down Trump's power board shakeup in Puerto Rico. Power Centers Chinese solar panels hit U.S. border policeThe Trump administration has increased enforcement of a trade law meant to keep solar cells made with Chinese forced labor out of the United States, Zack Colman reports. A review of U.S. Customs and Border Protection data showed a sharp uptick since June of detentions of electronics, including solar cells and modules, under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The crackdown is slowing the volume of cells produced in China that are making it to U.S. solar panel manufacturers. U.S. border enforcement for the first time in June held up polysilicon from South Korea destined for manufacturing facilities owned by Qcells, a subsidiary of Korean firm Hanwha. Climate change cancel cultureAn emergency case at the Supreme Court could cast a ripple effect on cases involving federal funding for climate research, Jean Chemnick writes. The case centers on the National Institutes of Health's move to cancel research grants awarded to scientists and universities. It's similar to the situation at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the agency is trying to reclaim funding awarded for a variety of climate projects. Lawyers are looking for clues on how lower courts or the Supreme Court could rule on challenges to EPA grant terminations. 'It could come out in ways that are very important for the climate cases, and it could come out in ways that really don't have a lot to do with the climate cases,' said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Orphaned wells across AmericaThe Interior Department has moved to cut environmental reviews to speed the cleanup of abandoned oil and gas wells, but attorneys warn it could open up states to litigation threats, Ian M. Stevenson writes. The 2021 infrastructure law opened up $4.7 billion to help states plug and clean up orphaned wells. The grants were tied to standard environmental reviews, but Interior in July removed those reviews from the program. Tens of thousands of abandoned wells exist across the United States, many of which send methane, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. There are around 120,000 documented orphaned wells nationwide, according to a 2023 release from the U.S. Geological Survey. In Other News No gas: San Francisco is moving to apply its all-electric building standard to substantial additions and renovations, in another attempt to stamp out fossil fuel use. 'Alligator Alcatraz': The location of a contentious migrant detention center in Florida is also the cite of a proposed airport that faced scrutiny over potential damage to the environment decades ago. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Environmentalists warn that a recent move by the Trump administration could open the door to shipping liquefied natural gas by rail. The National Energy Dominance Council inside the White House has been quietly driving Trump's policy ambition for the U.S. to become 'energy dominant.' Richard Goldberg, the senior counselor who helped conceive of and stood up the council, sat for an interview with West Wing Playbook. An appeals court in California will reconsider whether an updated rooftop solar policy followed the law after a state Supreme Court ruling. The Gulf of America, it is. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued a final rule 'to amend existing regulations to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.' That's it for today, folks. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Pam Bondi was a regular on Fox News – but hasn't appeared since the Epstein files backlash started
Attorney General Pam Bondi hasn't appeared on Fox News since backlash to the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files started. Bondi, once a regular on the cable giant, was last on-air as a guest with Sean Hannity on June 30, just days before the Justice Department and FBI dropped a bombshell memo about the Epstein case that ignited weeks of chaos, Mediaite first noted. The memo poured cold water on the theory that Epstein had a client list, concluded that he died in a New York jail cell by suicide, and said that no further documents in the case would be released to the public. It was the beginning of weeks of uproar over the administration's failure to release the full Epstein files despite making numerous promises to do so, and Bondi was in the middle of the MAGA firestorm. Fox News has largely followed President Donald Trump's lead and focused its attention on anything other than the controversy, which has dominated coverage at other outlets. Bondi has played a central role in the Epstein files saga. She told Fox News that the Epstein files were sitting on her desk back in February, but the comment came back to haunt her after the memo was released on the Fourth of July weekend. 'It's sitting on my desk right now to review,' Bondi told John Roberts in February, who asked if the Justice Department would release the list of clients. 'That's been a directive by President Trump.' Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy challenged Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Bondi's comment at a press conference in July, following the DOJ and FBI memo. 'So, what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?' Doocy asked Leavitt. 'Well, I think if you go back and look at what the attorney general said in that interview, which was on your network, on Fox News—' Leavitt said, before Doocy interrupted her to repeat Bondi's quote from February. Leavitt pushed back and said that Bondi was referring to 'the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.' Bondi also infuriated MAGA after she invited right-wing influencers to the White House and gave them 'Phase 1' binders. The binders contained information already in the public domain. Some of the headlines Fox has run about Bondi since have been less than favorable. 'Bondi under siege after DOJ reveals no Epstein client list,' a July 7 headline read, which again railed against the comment about the files being on her desk. The network also covered the reported feud between Bondi and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, headlined: 'Inside Dan Bongino's tense meeting with White House officials over Jeffrey Epstein fallout.' Despite some noise that he could walk over frustration with the Epstein case, Bongino remained in his role. Bondi briefly spoke with Fox correspondent David Spunt on July 18 during a tour of Alcatraz Island, but she did not appear as a guest as she has done many times previously. As Florida's Attorney General, Bondi was also the co-host of The Five and was a regular commentator for years.
