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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Technology
Anthony Cuthbertson

Trump’s new AI chatbot keeps fact-checking him

US President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House on 15 July, 2025 in Washington, DC - (Getty)

Donald Trump’s new AI-powered search engine has been contradicting the US president on some of his core policies since launching last week.

The Truth Search AI feature, which is integrated into the web browser of Mr Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, is designed to deliver “direct, reliable answers”, according to its creators.

The chatbot’s responses typically draw from right-wing and pro-Trump news sources like Fox News and Newsmax, however, it did not support recent statements made by Trump.

On Friday, Mr Trump said that his tariff policy has had a “huge positive impact” on the stock market, but the AI tool responded, saying “the evidence does not support this claim”.

First reported by The Washington Post, Truth Search AI also called the US president’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen “baseless”.

When asked about a recent post by Mr Trump on Truth Social about crime in Washington, D.C., the AI bot responded that it is “not totally out of control”.

Users on social media also shared instances of the new AI bot claiming that Barack Obama is the most popular president of the century, and that the Trump family’s crypto projects pose a conflict of interest.

Trump Media said in a press release unveiling the new feature that its mission was to “end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the internet and giving people their voices back”.

The AI feature is developed by the controversial artificial intelligence company Perplexity, which recently faced criticism after security firm Cloudflare alleged that it was secretly scraping websites without their permission.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the company was acting “like North Korean hackers”; however, Perplexity dismissed the claims.

Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent.

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