This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: With the U.S. midterms approaching, about one in five voters has asked AI chatbots about elections and politics, a recent survey found. But many voters may not know that governments around the world increasingly shape what chatbots can say.
And because many tech companies apply the same policies worldwide, the answers American voters get may be shaped by governments at home and abroad. I'm a researcher at a nonpartisan think tank at Vanderbilt University, where I study free speech policy. In two reports published in 2025 and 2026, my colleagues and I worked with global legal experts to examine how governments in 12 countries and regions regulate artificial intelligence.
Our research shows that they often use existing rules, such as national security or anti-state propaganda laws, rather than new AI laws to control what AI models can say. AI can cause real harm, from launching cyberattacks to generating sexualized images of children. It's important that governments tackle these harms.
But, in our assessment, some governments use legitimate concerns like these as a pretext to control political discussion, particularly chatbot responses about those in power. In 2024, an Indian journalist asked Google's Gemini chatbot whether the policies of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, were fascist. Gemini responded that some experts say yes.
The government reacted by requiring official permission before "unreliable" AI models could be released. Although authorities later dropped this requirement, the case shows how terms like "under-testing" or "unreliable" can be used for political purposes. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly.
China requires AI models to uphold "socialist core values." And in Turkey, a court blocked posts by Grok, the chatbot built into the social platform X, that allegedly insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and religious values. Research by Turkish law scholar Yaman Akdeniz identifies the Turkish rulings as among the earliest documented cases of state censorship of chatbots. Vietnam shows what such content controls can mean for dissidents, including those in exile.
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