A former Google employee is accusing the tech giant of breaching AI ethics policies by helping an Israeli military contractor analyze drone footage in 2024.
This is what a whistleblower complaint seen by The Washington Post and filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says.
The complaint alleged that Google breached its own “AI principles,” which, at the time of the incident detailed in the report, outlined that the company would not utilize AI technology to conduct surveillance in a manner “violating internationally accepted norms” or in relation to weapons.
According to The Washington Post, a customer support request allegedly sent from an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) email address was received by Google’s cloud-computing division.
The customer name attached to the support request matched an employee of CloudEx, an Israeli tech company. The SEC complaint additionally – and correctly – alleged that CloudEx is an IDF contractor.
Internal documents included with the complaint described that the customer requested help after noticing a bug while attempting to use Google’s Gemini AI to analyze aerial footage.
These issues reportedly led to the software occasionally failing to identify drones, soldiers, and other objects, The Washington Post said.
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Google’s cloud unit customer support staff reportedly responded with suggestions and did internal tests related to the request. It worked, apparently.
The complaint alleged that the aerial footage was related to Israeli operations in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas War, but provided no specific evidence supporting that claim.
The whistleblower additionally asserted that the customer service response contradicted Google’s publicly stated, previously federally filed, policies and claimed that it broke securities laws, as well as misled regulators and investors.
According to The Post, Google has previously stated that any work it has done with the Israeli government or officials was “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has by now removed guidelines that previously banned AI applications “likely to cause harm.” But the decision, criticized by Amnesty International and other human rights defenders, was only made in early 2025, and the contacts between an Israeli contractor and Google took place in 2024.
Microsoft, another US tech giant, blocked the IDF’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system collecting millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls in September 2025.
The former employee who filed the complaint said that they did so because they felt the company needed to be “held accountable” for the accused “double standard.”
A spokesperson for Google disputed the “double standard” claim and asserted that the customer support did not violate AI ethics because the support requester’s usage of Gemini services was too small to be considered “meaningful.”
Google’s “cloud video intelligence” service offers object tracking free for the first 1,000 minutes and costs 15 cents per additional minute, The Washington Post reported, citing Google documentation.
Microsoft, another US tech giant, blocked the IDF’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system collecting millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls in September 2025.
Microsoft’s decision was the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
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