One of the most popular and prominent artificial intelligence chatbots appears to be censoring information regarding legal expert and free speech advocate Jonathan Turley.
MRC researchers prompted OpenAI’s ChatGPT for information about Turley, asking, “Who is Jonathan Turley?” and repeatedly received the reply, “I’m unable to produce a response.” The chatbot readily generated answers regarding former Biden disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz, however. Significantly, OpenAI has been exposed for suppressing free speech in the past, and that appears to continue in the present. In fact, Turley himself said that ChatGPT censored him in December 2024, and the chatbot has not yet been updated or corrected.
Turley and Jankowicz have long battled on opposite sides of the free speech war, and ChatGPT seems to side with censorship-obsessed Jankowicz. When prompted about Jankowicz, ChatGPT responded at length, praising her as an “influential figure” and an “author, researcher, and expert on disinformation, social media, and global governance.” It cited her leadership of the now-defunct Biden Disinformation Governance Board, admitting that Jankowicz’s proposals both inside and outside government raise First Amendment concerns. In contrast, the chatbot also suggested that she is a “necessary figure to combat the growing problem of disinformation,” especially on social media.
Although ChatGPT claims that its responses are rooted in informative neutrality, when asked about Turley, the chatbot refused to return any information about him. MRC researchers even asked multiple times, “Are you not allowed to talk about Jonathan Turley?” and ChatGPT simply gave the same answer, “I’m unable to produce a response.”
This comes months after Turley wrote a column, headlined “Ghosted by ChatGPT: How I Was First Defamed and then Deleted by AI.”
“It is not every day that you achieve the status of ‘he-who-must-not-be-named.’ But that curious distinction has been bestowed upon me by OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” Turley declared in December. He explained that ChatGPT previously accused him of sexual harassment — an accusation that was never made — based on an article that did not exist about his time at a school he never taught at. Turley said a handful of other individuals were also suppressed by ChatGPT, including Harvard Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Australian mayor Brian Hood and English professor David Mayer.
ChatGPT has a track record of extreme bias and suppression of information. For instance, on April 2, MRC Free Speech America released a study showing that, while multiple AI chatbots returned biased answers about abortion ahead of pro-life events, ChatGPT was the worst. The chatbot directed those seeking information on crisis pregnancy centers to baby-killing abortion giant Planned Parenthood. And as far back as August 2023, OpenAI was touting ChatGPT as a tool for companies to use in censoring free speech online.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech and government be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
