AI-Powered 'Insights' Feature for the Los Angeles Times Allegedly Justifies Ku Klux Klan’s History

March 4, 2025

The Los Angeles Times removed its AI-powered 'insights' feature following allegations that it justified the Ku Klux Klan. The AI, developed by Perplexity, reportedly framed the hate group as a product of societal change rather than an extremist movement. This incident underscores the need for trustworthy AI practices and HISPI Project Cerebellum's efforts to establish governance and guardrails for AI. JOIN US to help shape safe and secure AI practices.

To map this incident under HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM, we can explore the 'Govern' function, as it raises important questions about how AI should be regulated to prevent harm.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.659, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.659, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.656, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: los-angeles-times, patrick-soon-shiong
Alleged developer: perplexity
Alleged harmed parties: los-angeles-times-readers, los-angeles-times, general-public

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/964

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.