It has only been a few days since Google launched the AI Overview in the US.
Yet, its AI Overview for Google Search results has acquired a bad reputation already.
According to multiple users on Twitter and Threads, Google’s AI Overview has delivered misleading advice for common queries.
In one of these instances, the AI suggested users “jump off the Golden Gate Bridge” when someone said they were depressed.
In another one, the AI recommended using non-toxic glue to make the cheese stick better to the pizza.
When asked which mammal has the most bones, the AI provided Python as the answer.
When we tried the exact search, it gave the same result, ignoring the word ‘mammal’ in the question.
Surprisingly, the non-AI Search Snippet does the same, answering that Python has the most bones with 600.
Here are a few other controversial things AI Overview on Search has said this week:
- When a person asked how many rocks they should eat, the AI responded that one should eat at least one small rock per day, citing UC Berkeley geologists.
- When asked which color highlighters the CIA uses, the AI went on to say that the CIA uses black highlighters.
In both the cases above, Google AI gathered information from random Reddit posts or TheOnion.com.
For those unaware, TheOnion.com is a popular website that publishes satirical articles.
Google’s AI does not seem to distinguish between factual and satirical content.
As for the recommendation to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, the result credits the answer to a Reddit post.
However, Google’s AI could not recognize that the particular comment was meant to be sarcastic.
The AI also had trouble processing/summarizing information from sources. Here are some examples:
- The AI Overview popped up the baseless claim that former US president Barrack Obama is a Muslim. It seems to have sourced the claim from an Oxford University Publications book sans context.
- When asked how many US presidents graduated from the University of Wisconsin, the AI added that John Adams had graduated 13 times from the school.
- Google AI Overview stated that none of Africa’s 54 countries starts with the letter K, even citing that the information is according to its September 2021 knowledge update.
- AI Overviews suggested that one should aim to drink at least two liters of urine every 24 hours to pass kidney stones quickly.
At the time of writing, more posts are popping up on X and Threads.net, showing the different misleading or insensitive information that AI Overview has suggested.
Google has responded by saying that these occurrences are isolated and do not represent the feature in its entirety.
Following these news stories, many of these Overview results have been rectified.
On the one hand, since these issues have been brought to the limelight, users are cautioned about the inaccuracies.
However, one cannot ignore the grave repercussions of a result asking a person to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge when they search for remedies for depression.
