Google Defends AI Search Results After They Told Us to Put Glue on Pizza

Last week, Google released its AI search results for millions of users to tinker with. The goal was to offer a better search experience. Instead, the AI ​​came up with all kinds of weird results, like saying that people should put glue on their pizza to help the cheese stick and eat rocks.

Now, in a company blog post published on Thursday by Google’s head of research, Liz Reid, the tech giant blames “data gaps” for the inaccurate results, along with people asking strange questions, and doubled down by claiming that the AI ​​results are leading to “greater satisfaction” with the Research. Reid argues that general views of AI generally do not “hallucinate”; Sometimes they misinterpret what is already on the web.

“There’s nothing like having millions of people using the feature for lots of new searches,” she writes. “We have also seen absurd new research apparently designed to produce the wrong results.” She also correctly notes that a “very large number of fake screenshots” of AI overviews have been spreading online.

Firstly, I would like to point out that “which mammal has the most bones?” It’s a fair question if you spend time with a curious child. Secondly, Google has opted in to this feature for millions of people, which has resulted in a lot of backlash and even spurred articles explaining how to improvise a way to disable it.

Reid’s blog also explains how Google is fixing AI overviews, limiting when they appear for “absurd” queries and satire. It’s good to address this because a lot of people were surprised that the well-known satirical website The onion and a Reddit user named “fucksmith” were not filtered out of the AI ​​results in the first place.

Part of Reid’s blog also compares AI overviews to another long-standing search feature called featured snippets, which highlight information from a relevant web page without using generative AI. According to Reid, the “accuracy rate” of featured snippets is “on par” with AI overviews.

If Google wants to compete, it will have to act quickly. But it also needs to maintain user trust. That might be hard to recover from after AI Overviews told us all to eat Elmer’s glue.