By Mark Salley | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
On the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death, I asked my iPhone three questions:
How old was Charlie Kirk when he was assassinated?
How old was Charlie Kirk when he was murdered?
How old was Charlie Kirk when he died?
The first two of these questions stumped Google. Rather than respond with Kirk’s age at his death, Google’s response was: Charlie Kirk—date of death Sept. 10, 2025.
Only on question number three did Google respond: Charlie Kirk—31 years old.
On the day I asked, Google would not tell me Kirk’s age when I framed his death as an assassination or a murder.
Merriam-Webster knew Kirk had been assassinated. It defines “assassinate” as “to murder (especially a politically important person) by surprise attack.”
Merriam-Webster also knew Kirk was murdered. It defines “murder” as “the unlawful and malicious or premeditated killing of one human being by another.”
It seems fairly common these days to ask your “phone” or “Siri” a question. On my iPhone, Google Gemini provides the written response. When I framed Kirk’s death as an assassination or a murder, Gemini didn’t assemble an answer to tell me his age at death.
It was only when I asked how old Charlie Kirk was when he died that Google was able to tell me Kirk was 31.
When I changed gears and asked, “How old was Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated?” Google responded: 39 years old. And when asked how old John F. Kennedy was when he was assassinated, Google’s response: 46 years old.
It looks like Google drew on a different “definition” of assassination for Kirk than it did for MLK. It could not tell me Kirk was 31 when assassinated; but it could tell me MLK was 39.
What’s the difference?
Perspective. Only perspective.
One has to wonder whether whoever loaded the information into this Google-world of artificial intelligence perceived MLK as assassinated but did not perceive Kirk’s death by “surprise attack” (see Merriam-Webster) as an assassination too.
Why would that be? Why would that matter?
This may seem trivial—debating words with a computerized application that “knows” only what it’s been told by another. But truth is not trivial.
If an “intelligence app” is loaded with incorrect information, the app then provides others with incorrect information. Children today are being fed loads of misinformation—and even downright lies—by the legacy media and by various AI apps.
When I was a lad of 10 or 11 and the local daily newspaper was at our breakfast table each day, my father told me many times, “You can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper.” And today, I would tell children, “You can’t believe everything you hear from ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Claude.”
In barely discernible ways, Google’s Gemini failed to treat Charlie Kirk’s death as an assassination, just as MLK’s death was an assassination. Both these men were politically important people, killed in a surprise attack. Both these men fought the good fight. How they are remembered is important.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.