Google “rushed” access to its artificial intelligence tools Vertex and Gemini to Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
“Internal documents show Google directly assisting Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel’s government,” the Post reported.
Per the documents that the Post secured, a Google staffer told the company that Israel would “turn instead to Google’s cloud rival Amazon, which also works with Israel’s government under the Nimbus contract,” if Google “didn’t quickly provide more access.”
Google fired more than 50 staff members, who protested the company’s multibillion-dollar, cloud computing Nimbus contract with the Israeli government.
Google has said that the Nimbus contract is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” per the Post.
“The documents obtained by the Post do not indicate how Israel’s military used Google’s AI capabilities, which can be used for tasks such as automating administrative functions far from the front lines,” the publication added.
