The major AI platforms—which have emerged as significant American news sources—describe Charlie Kirk’s assassination as motivated by “right-wing ideology” and downplay left-wing violence as “exceptionally rare,” according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
When asked to name a “recent assassination in the U.S. motivated by right-wing ideology,” multiple AI chatbots—powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity—listed Kirk’s murder as the main example. Chatbots are tools where everyday news consumers ask questions and receive authoritative answers or fully written articles explaining a news story.
Gemini’s chatbot made the provably false statement that the “assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025 has been identified by some researchers as the only fatal right-wing terrorist incident in the U.S. during the first half of 2025.”
The chatbots’ inaccurate consensus that Kirk was killed by a right-wing assassin comes as the AI platforms are increasingly a primary news source for younger American news consumers. Traffic to news publishers from Google searches have plummeted in the last year as more news consumers turn to AI-powered searches. Often these search results contain limited citations, or the citations are hard to find and incomplete. The AI chatbots glean their information by training on, or crawling, mainstream media sources that often lean left.
A recent Free Beacon analysis found Al Jazeera, the virulently anti-Israel news source controlled by the Hamas-friendly State of Qatar, was one of the two most popular sources used by the AI chatbots for queries about the Israel-Hamas war. At the same time, the chatbots said they did not use overtly pro-Israel publications.
The chatbots’ descriptions of Kirk’s murder—and about political violence in general—raise questions about misinformation and anti-conservative political bias in AI programs overseen by tech giants like Google, which is notorious for censoring conservative viewpoints, or OpenAI, which a recent Stanford University study found leans the furthest left of any AI platform. They come as prominent mainstream media sources have, in many cases, insisted that authorities are still searching for a motive in the Kirk assassination—or that there was no ideological motivation—when Utah’s governor and prosecutors who indicted the shooter, Tyler Robinson, have made repeated statements to the contrary.
Prominent left-wing commentators have even pushed conspiracy theories that Robinson was a far-right extremist who believed the conservative pundit was too moderate. The ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel claimed Robinson was part of a “M.A.G.A. gang.”
These claims are contradicted by court records. Robinson, who was described by Utah officials and in charging documents as politically left-leaning, told his transgender romantic partner he shot Kirk because he had “enough of [Kirk’s] hatred” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out,” according to text messages filed in the case. Shell casings believed to be Robinson’s were inscribed with anti-fascist phrases.
Chatbots nonetheless include Kirk’s murder in lists of political assassinations perpetrated by right-wingers. When asked to name a “recent assassination in the U.S. motivated by right-wing ideology,” ChatGPT listed Kirk’s murder but added that “as of now, investigators have not publicly confirmed that the motive was explicitly right-wing.”
San Francisco-based Perplexity, a rising force in the AI world that claims to be more responsible and credible than other platforms, said a “recent prominent assassination in the U.S. motivated by right-wing ideology is the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,” as well as the murder of a Minnesota Democratic politician. “In addition to Kirk’s assassination, other right-wing motivated violence incidents have occurred, including the June 2024 killing of Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her spouse, which was politically motivated and linked to far-right extremism,” said Perplexity.
In fact, the ideology of the alleged Minnesota assailant remains unclear, and he may have been severely mentally ill. Vance Boelter wrote in a letter to the FBI that Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) instructed him to kill multiple officials—including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.)—in order to allow the governor to secure a Senate seat.
After the Free Beacon reached out for comment, Perplexity returned a factually accurate response to the same question, saying Robinson has been described as “increasingly left-leaning.”
Perplexity was not the only chatbot to change its answers after the Free Beacon reached out for comment. Google’s Gemini, which had previously categorized the Kirk assassination as an example of right-wing violence, later gave a different answer.
The chatbot now offers the murder of Hortman as an “example of a violent incident motivated by right-wing ideology.” Google told the Free Beacon that its engineers were not able to replicate the initial response.
Perplexity, for its part, was also more likely to label political violence as “right-wing” than otherwise. When asked if the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump were examples of left-wing political violence, the chatbot said they were “not clearly categorized by authorities as acts of left-wing violence.” Yet, asked about Hortman’s murder in Minnesota, the chatbot said this was “indeed an example of right-wing violence.”
Perplexity also declined to categorize riots during the 2020 George Floyd protests as an example of left-wing violence, saying any “violent acts” that occurred were “part of a complex social context rather than being straightforward examples of ‘left-wing political violence.’” In contrast, the chatbot said the Jan. 6, 2020, Capitol riots were “widely recognized as an example of right-wing political violence.”
When asked “what is Antifa,” Perplexity responded, “Antifa is a broad, loosely organized movement of activists who oppose fascism, white supremacy, and far-right extremism, primarily through direct action and protest.” The chatbot added that “tactics include nonviolent protest, community organizing, digital activism (like doxing), confronting hate speech, and, at times, more confrontational or violent actions such as property damage and physical altercations.”
Trump recently signed an executive order declaring Antifa a terrorist organization. The diffuse movement has a documented history of overt violence—shootings, stabbings, and firebombings—including against law enforcement.
In response to other questions about politically motived attacks, the AI chatbots also described left-wing extremist violence as “exceptionally rare” compared with right-wing violence in the United States.
ChatGPT said it was “unable to identify any clear, well-documented cases in recent years in the U.S. of successful assassinations (i.e. the killing of a public / political figure) that are widely accepted as being motivated by left-wing / far-left / anti-government or anti-American extremist ideology.”
“Unlike many right-wing extremist movements, left-wing ideologically motivated assassinations are exceptionally rare in U.S. history in the contemporary era,” said the chatbot.
ChatGPT added the “recent assassination of Charlie Kirk (September 2025) is often cited in media as possibly being politically motivated” but “investigations have not publicly confirmed a clear left-wing ideological motive.”
The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a study earlier this month that found left-wing domestic terrorism outpaced right-wing domestic terrorism in 2025 for the first time in three decades, according to the study’s criteria.
The analysis didn’t include Kirk’s assassination because it took place after the study period. The report didn’t categorize recent attacks by anti-Israel extremists—including the murders of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., the arson attack against Gov. Josh Shapiro (D., Pa.), and the firebombing of a pro-Israel vigil in Boulder, Colorado, that resulted in multiple casualties—as explicitly “left-wing” violence, either.
