Google Home spreads bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory

Fake news finds a new way into your home
 By 
Marcus Gilmer
 on 
Google Home spreads bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory
Could Cool Dad Barack Obama really be planning a coup like Google Home claims? Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

I don't want to alarm anyone, but if Google Home is to be believed, Barack Obama is planning a coup.

With Trump making unfounded accusations against Obama this weekend, it makes sense that Google's smart speaker would indulge in a right-wing conspiracy theory.

First, Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand discovered that Google was offering up fake news about an Obama coup when you typed the question into the search engine behemoth.

Then, as noted by ReCode, videos of Google's in-home assistant replying with the same answer began to circulate, an unsettling development that would give your conservative uncle the upper hand in your next political debate.

In a statement to ReCode, a Google spokesperson said that such snippets happen because they're an "automatic and algorithmic match" for the query, but that when they're told of a snippet that violates policy, "we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance."

But, as of Sunday afternoon, Google Home was still giving off the same paranoid vibes as before.

We've reached out to Google to figure out when the voice-activated speaker, which is powered by Google Assistant, will get its chill back. (UPDATE: Later Sunday evening, a Google spokesperson told us the Google Home was no longer giving the answer heard below.)

It's not the first glitch for Google Home that's gone viral. Multiple users reported their units were activated by Google's Super Bowl commercial. And we learned that it's not hard to prank Google Home and Amazon Echo into a cycle of never-ending chicanery.

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Marcus Gilmer

Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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