Google has launched AI Overviews in the USA. The AI-supported program answers questions in detail, but sometimes with confusing answers. The search engine cannot properly distinguish between information and satire.
Since last week, Google users in the US can now receive answer summaries generated by artificial intelligence when doing their searches. The summaries – called AI Overviews in the US – are intended to give users a direct answer to their questions more quickly, instead of presenting them with a list of web links.
But since Google has added AI overviews to its search engine on a broad front in the USA, embarrassing and even disturbing errors in the software have been making the rounds on the Internet.
Dogs play in NFL?
For example, one user posted a recommendation to use non-toxic glue to attach the cheese to a pizza. According to screenshots, the search engine’s AI responses claimed that dogs had played in the NBA and NFL and that Barack Obama was the first Muslim president of the United States.
In many cases, the AI software seems unable to distinguish serious information from jokes or satire. Some particularly silly claims were found to be based on joke posts on online platforms or articles from the satirical website The Onion – such as the claim that geologists recommend eating a small stone a day.
Google: “Isolated examples”
One Google spokeswoman told technology blog The Vergethe errors were “generally due to very unusual requests and do not reflect what most people experience”. These “isolated examples” are used to improve the product.
In February, Google had to endure online ridicule for an AI program. The Gemini software generated images of non-white Nazi soldiers and non-white American settlers. Google explained that it had failed to program exceptions for cases in which diversity was definitely out of place. After that, the company stopped allowing Gemini to generate images of people for the time being.
Launch in other countries at the end of the year
Several start-ups want to use AI answers to challenge Google’s dominance in web searches. But the Internet company is also moving in this direction itself. The search engine has long provided short answers to factual questions via links. But now some of them are texts with several paragraphs.
The function is to be introduced in other countries by the end of the year. Many website operators and media are worried that Google will direct fewer people to them as a result of the AI summaries and that their business will suffer as a result. Google counters that there is actually more traffic to the sources of information that end up in the overviews. How the rest of them will fare, however, remains unclear.