From telling people they should eat rocks to suggesting glue should be added to pizzas, Google’s newest AI search feature isn’t quite working out as planned.
In a simpler time, people could search on Google to the answers to burning questions, facts about topics of interest, or how to complete tough tasks, but its newest addition is making matters worse.
On May 14, the company formally announced that AI-powered changes were to be taking place. This included the news of ‘AI Overviews’ which aims to provide a quick answer to any search through the use of artificial intelligence.
When the team shared the news at Google’s annual conference for developers, the feature was rolled out to everyone in the United States, and other countries were told they’d be able to access it soon.
Google’s AI Overviews is spewing out incorrect information
Now that people have had a go for themselves, testing the feature with a whole range of questions and searches, the AI feature has been disastrous.
In one search, where someone input ‘cheese not sticking to pizza’ into Google, the AI Overview tool flashed up saying: “Cheese can slide off pizza for several reasons, including too much sauce, too much cheese, or thickened sauce. Here are some things you can try…”
After suggesting mixing in the sauce, the AI then said: “You can also add about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.”
How is Google getting it so wrong? Well, it appears to be taking what Redditors post as fact. In an 11-year-old thread on the forum site one user called “f**ksmith” replies to a post titled “My cheese slides off the pizza too easily” by (clearly) jokingly telling the original poster to use glue when making the sauce.
Google AI overview suggests adding glue to get cheese to stick to pizza, and it turns out the source is an 11 year old Reddit comment from user F*cksmith pic.twitter.com/uDPAbsAKeO
— Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 23, 2024
In another search, the AI Overview responded to ‘how many rocks shall i eat?’ with “According to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day…”
I couldn’t believe it before I tried it. Google needs to fix this asap.. pic.twitter.com/r3FyOfxiTK
— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) May 23, 2024
Although the feature is in its infancy, it begs the question as to whether it was properly tested or merely pushed out too quickly to reap the benefits of the current AI hype.
Featured Image: Via Google AI
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