AI chatbots risk spreading government restrictions on online speech, study says
Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of US President Donald Trump or Britain's King Charles III, and Anthropic's chatbot will oblige.
Prompt it to do the same for Thailand's king or Iran's supreme leader, and the AI model declines.
That is a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday, showing that major AI systems — including those built in the US — are more likely to refuse to criticise restrictive leaders or governments.
It raises concerns that the large language models powering chatbots and AI agents could be amplifying government influence over online speech as the technology is increasingly adopted worldwide.
