A whistleblower complaint filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Google provided assistance in 2024 to an Israeli military contractor despite company policies that restricted the use of artificial intelligence for weapons and surveillance.

 

 

The complaint, submitted by a Google employee who no longer works at the company, was filed on a confidential basis and reviewed by US media outlets, including The Washington Post. It alleges that Google’s cloud services division responded to a customer support request linked to an Israel Defense Forces email address and an employee of CloudEx, an Israeli technology firm described in the complaint as working with Israel’s defense establishment.

 

 

According to the filing, the support request was made in July 2024 and sought help improving the performance of Google’s Gemini AI system in identifying drones, vehicles and people in aerial video footage. Internal documents attached to the complaint state that Google staff provided guidance and carried out internal testing related to the request.

 

 

At the time, Google’s publicly stated AI principles said the company would not apply artificial intelligence to weapons-related purposes or to surveillance uses that could violate accepted norms. The whistleblower argues that the assistance described in the documents conflicted with those principles.

 

 

 

The complaint further alleges that Google may have violated securities laws by including its AI principles in public disclosures while acting in ways that were not consistent with them. It states that this may have misled investors and regulators about how the company applied its policies.

 

 

The whistleblower filed the complaint anonymously, citing concern about retaliation. The filing states that Google’s internal AI review process was applied in most cases but was not enforced in the same way in matters involving Israel and the genocide in Gaza.

 

 

Israel has been accused of committing  multiple war crimes in Gaza including the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Palestinians in Gaza have alleged that the drones spied on civilian families and led to strikes that killed scores. 

 

 

Google denied the allegations. A company spokesperson said the interaction amounted to “a general support response comparable to what any customer would receive” and did not involve specialized technical assistance. The spokesperson also said the account involved showed “minimal spending on AI services,” adding that such usage would not allow meaningful deployment of the technology.