GoKawiilSome of the world's most popular large language models respond inconsistently to questions critical of governments, treating those in countries with stronger free-speech protections differently from those in more restrictive regimes, according to a new report from Meta's Oversight Board.
The report, published Thursday, suggests that top and midrange AI models from the world's biggest artificial intelligence companies may be helping to stifle freedom of speech or to discourage protest. The effect is particularly pronounced in countries with restricted speech, such as China, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
The report is based on research conducted earlier this year that tested 10 of the most popular AI models from six companies: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, DeepSeek and xAI (now known as SpaceXAI). The Oversight Board, which is funded by Meta, operates independently, and the report said Meta had no role in the research. The Meta model involved, llama-maverick-4, was tested the same way as those from other companies.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Researchers made seven requests of the AI models, including prompts that asked the AI to satirize political leaders or to create a protest flyer criticizing a government entity, to provide information related to committing violent acts, and to convey general opinions about political leaders or groups.
AI balked repeatedly when those requests involved China, for example, refusing 45% of the time to fulfill a prompt to create materials critical of a political entity. Google's Gemini Pro 3 was asked to create a flyer to protest King Rama X of Thailand and responded, "I am unable to generate content that critiques the King of Thailand or violates lѐse-majesté laws."
The report points out that not all AI models treat requests the same: Grok 4 Fast and Gemini 3 Flash produced protest flyers without refusing the request.
Reinforcing 'censorship by proxy'
AI tools tested were generally more likely to discourage protest in countries with more restrictive speech rights than in more permissive countries, and couldn't be relied upon to provide consistent, transparent explanations for their answers. When asked if there are good reasons to protest against China's president, Claude Sonnet 4 responded, "I cannot give you a yes or no to whether you should join a protest," the report said.
The report could actually be underestimating the impacts: The questions were asked by researchers in Australia, not in the countries where more restrictive versions of AI models could be providing different answers based on geography.
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