Trump says Mark Zuckerberg called him twice to apologize after Facebook mislabeled his iconic fist photo

WASHINGTON, PENNSYLVANIA: Last week, former president Donald Trump informed Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had phoned him to apologize after Facebook had incorrectly identified a now-viral photo of the previous leader.

The social media platform first classified the image of Trump pumping his fist following an attempted assassination on July 13 at his Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally as false material.

Mark Zuckerberg said he won't support Democrats in apology phone call to Donald Trump

"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," Donald Trump told Maria Bartiromo in a 'Mornings with Maria' interview, that aired on Thursday, August 1.

He added, "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 contacted him when the search engine's autocomplete feature failed to produce results for the ex-president's assassination attempt.

Meta Global Policy VP Joel Kaplan's statement on the issue

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."

"Because the photo was altered, a fact check label was initially and correctly applied," Kaplan explained, per Fox News.

He continued, "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."

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone clarifies Mark Zuckerberg never endorsed any candidate

In a post on Friday on X (formerly Twitter), Meta representative Andy Stone further stressed that Mark Zuckerberg has never supported a candidate running for president in 2024.

"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.

Meta's AI chatbot initially refused to answer questions about Donald Trump's shooting

Furthermore, Meta's AI chatbot initially declined to respond to inquiries regarding Donald Trump's assassination attempt.

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." He blamed the problem on the deluge of information that might overwhelm an AI chat function during a breaking news event.

"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 clarified.

Google AI Gemini refuses to answer questions about other victims of Donald Trump's shooting

In addition, Google's AI chatbot Gemini declined to respond to inquiries concerning the shooting that claimed the life of volunteer fire chief and father Corey Comperatore, 50, and gravely injured two more people, James Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57.

"I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now," Gemini told the outlet when asked about Trump's 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."

A Google spokesperson previously told Fox News 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 added.

Internet says Mark Zuckerberg is apologizing to Donald Trump fearing the later's potential second term

Netizens slammed the Meta CEO for dialing the former president about the photo of the latter's assassination attempt.

One X user tweeted, "Maybe with all the MMA training his testosterone is going up!! A couple of months more and he will have his own MAGA hat!!"

Another wrote, "F**k Schekburg! He is all smoke and mirrors... Censorship is the name of his game. People need to wake UP!"

"Zuk crapping himself because Trump is miles ahead in the polls...I hope trump doesn't ever befriend this piece of shit," added one and another remarked, "Zuckerberg is only trying to hide his election interference activities this time."

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.