Google may not be able to guarantee advertisements won't appear next to offensive content, but it is working on a solution that "can get pretty close," according to Alphabet's executive chairman Eric Schmidt talking to FOX Business on Thursday.
Google has faced fallout on Wall Street this week as advertisers put pronounced pressure on the company's policies.
Google is one of the top platforms for digital advertisers, accounting for about 40 percent of all online ad budgets, and 13 percent of display ad budgets, according to eMarketer. Google's YouTube video site ran ads for major brands next to neo-Nazi and jihadist videos, according to The Times of London. Companies like AT&T and Johnson & Johnson have since suspended some digital advertising, and some analysts said the outcry could be
Schmidt was asked whether he can ensure that the algorithm doesn't make the same mistake again.
"We can't guarantee it, but we can get pretty close," he said.
Google has increased the time it takes to manually review ad matching and violations of Google's terms of service, Schmidt said. Hopefully, Google can build products that can move extreme content down in the rankings in a way that's better than what social media does, Schmidt said.
"We're very good at detecting what's the most relevant and what's the least relevant. It should be possible for computers to detect malicious, misleading and incorrect information and essentially have you not see it. We're not arguing for censorship, we're arguing just take it off the page, put it somewhere else...make it harder to find," Schmidt said, adding: "I think we're going to be ok."
Schmidt also appeared on "CBS This Morning," where he discussed the new presidential administration. He said that it was "literally crazy" to not allow talented people to come to America, just because they are foreign.
"It is insane to allow people to stay in other countries who want to come to our country to create companies, and to create new jobs, create wealth, and power our economy," Schmidt said.