Trump says Mark Zuckerberg called to apologize about photo of assassination attempt

Former President Trump told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo last week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him to apologize after Facebook wrongly mislabeled a now-viral photo of the former president.

The photo showing Trump raising a fist after a July 13 assassination attempt at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, sliced his ear was initially labeled as misinformation on the social media site.

"So, Mark Zuckerberg called me. First of all, he called me two times. He called me after the event and he said that was really amazing," Trump told Bartiromo in a "Mornings with Maria" interview that aired Thursday. "It was really brave. And he actually announced that he's not going to support a Democrat because he can't because he respected me for what I did that day. I think what I did… to me, was a normal response."

"He actually apologized. He said they made a mistake… and they're correcting the mistake," Trump said, adding that Google never called him after the search engine's autocomplete function failed to show results for the Trump assassination attempt. 

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Former President Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents at the campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Meta Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan said in a July 30 statement that Meta incorrectly added a fact-check label to the assassination attempt photo, which quickly went viral and appeared in global news outlets, because the social media giant's AI detector tool "experienced an issue related to the circulation of a doctored photo of former President Trump with his fist in the air, which made it look like the Secret Service agents were smiling."

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"Because the photo was altered, a fact check label was initially and correctly applied," Kaplan explained. "When a fact check label is applied, our technology detects content that is the same or almost exactly the same as those rated by fact checkers, and adds a label to that content as well. Given the similarities between the doctored photo and the original image – which are only subtly (although importantly) different – our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo, too. Our teams worked to quickly correct this mistake."

Former President Trump is rushed offstage during the rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone also clarified in a Friday post on X that Zuckerberg has never endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election: "Mark's already been public about the fact that he's not endorsing either candidate, just as he hasn't in prior elections," Stone wrote. The company didn’t comment further.

Additionally, Meta's AI chatbot initially refused to answer questions about the shooting.

Kaplan said that while neither error "was the result of bias, it was unfortunate," and the company understands "why it could leave people with that impression." Kaplan attributed the issue to the mass amounts of information in a breaking news situation that can overwhelm an AI chat feature.

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Facebook accounts labeled the image of Trump raising his fist after a shooting against him as "altered." (X screenshot)

"Rather than have Meta AI give incorrect information about the attempted assassination, we programmed it to simply not answer questions about it after it happened – and instead give a generic response about how it couldn’t provide any information. This is why some people reported our AI was refusing to talk about the event. We’ve since updated the responses that Meta AI is providing about the assassination attempt, but we should have done this sooner," Kaplan said.

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Google's AI chatbot called Gemini also refused to answer questions about the shooting that left 50-year-old father and volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore dead and two others – 74-year-old James Copenhaver and 57-year-old David Dutch – critically wounded.

Screenshots show Google search results for the failed assassination of former President Trump. (Google/screengrab)

"I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now," Gemini told Fox News Digital when asked about the recent assassination attempt. "While I would never deliberately share something that's inaccurate, I can make mistakes. So, while I work on improving, you can try Google Search."

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A Google spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital in response that Gemini was "responding as intended."

"As we announced last year, we restrict responses for election-related queries on the Gemini app and web experience. By clicking the blue link in the response, you'll be directed to the accurate and up-to-date Search results," the spokesperson said.

FOX Business' Louis Casiano and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.