“Fictional entity:” Google AI denies existence of Elon Musk’s DOGE

Google’s AI-powered search seems to be confused about whether the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ever existed – or what it is exactly.

The neat little summaries provided by AI Overview are the first – and increasingly the last – thing that many of us read when doing a Google search these days. Unfortunately, they’re sometimes just plain wrong, and we may only realize it when the misinformation is too blatant to miss.

The existence of the notorious White House commission, originally run by President Donald Trump’s former adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, is a case in point. When users asked some DOGE-related questions, Google AI appeared to deny the entity's existence.

Bluesky user iucoinu shared screenshots of their interaction with Google search, where an AI-provided summary described DOGE as a “fictional entity” and a “conspiracy theory.” It said the term was simply a political satire and used to criticize Trump’s policies.

“[W]as idly looking up how many people DOGE is projected to kill and Google’s AI informed me that it was all in my head and that DOGE isn’t real,” iucoinu said in their post on social media.

Screenshots show iucoinu searching for information on “doge deaths,” which prompted an AI Overview summary denying the entity's existence. While AI Overview is right in saying DOGE is “no real department,” it does exist, even if its status is unclear.

Cybernews has searched for the same term as the Bluesky user, but was not provided with an AI summary.

However, when we googled “department of government efficiency deaths,” the search bot told us that DOGE was a “proposed” entity and went on to say that it had been linked to “significant cuts and disruptions” in US foreign aid and government services.

When we searched for “does department of government efficiency exist,” we were given a response saying, “No, there isn't an officially established federal department called the ‘Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),’ as such a department requires an act of Congress.”

It further clarified that “DOGE was established by an executive order as an advisory body under President Trump to provide recommendations on modernizing federal IT and streamlining bureaucracy.”

Google acknowledges that its AI summaries may be misleading and all come with a disclaimer in fine print that they "may include mistakes."

DOGE was established in January of this year by Trump’s executive order. It was headed by Musk until the X owner fell out of grace with the president and left the administration in May.

The unofficial department carried out mass layoffs and dismantled a number of government-funded organizations, including cuts to foreign aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which reportedly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them children.