Those erroneous search results were just the AI doing its job, says Google—"Prior to these screenshots going viral, practically no one asked Google that question"

SoftwareAIThose erroneous search results were just the AI doing its job, says Google—“Prior to these screenshots going viral, practically no one asked Google that question"When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Typing on internet search toolbar: What am I doing?

Google’s AI Overview search feature has had, I think it’s fair to say, quite a rocky start. From recommending usersdrink urine(light in color), to suggesting theaddition of glueto a pizza sauce, we’ve all had a laugh at the AI’s expense. In between bouts of existential dread and genuine concern over the serious damage this sort of advice could wreak upon users looking for factual results, of course.

NowGoogle has responded, and it turns out that actually the whole thing was really a big success (viaThe Verge). Liz Reid, head of Google search, says that “user feedback shows that…people have higher satisfaction with their search results”, and that really, these erroneous results are simply down to the poor AI responding to “nonsensical queries and satirical content”.

This, Reid explains, is what is referred to as a “data void” or “information gap”, where Google can only pull from a limited amount of high-quality content about a specific topic. Given that the only information the AI could reference was a satirical article that was also republished on a geological software provider’s website, the AI Overview “faithfully linked to one of the only websites that tackled the question”.

Since the launch, Google has apparently been busy working on updates that should prevent these sorts of results from appearing in future. These include better detection mechanisms that shouldn’t show an AI overview for “nonsensical queries”, limits on the usage of user-generated content in responses, and “additional triggering refinements to enhance our quality protections.”

There’s also an interesting line in regards to news coverage: “We aim to not show AI Overviews for hard news topics, where freshness and factuality is important.”

Which, to me, reads as “Our AI is really not very good at getting the facts right, so we’re doing our best to keep it away from important topics where it might get us in trouble”.

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The post ends with the reassurance that “we’ll keep improving when and how we show AI Overviews and strengthening our protections, including for edge cases, and we’re very grateful for the ongoing feedback.”

So well done for your beta testing participation, Internet. Google is learning from you, it seems, and I personally hope that none of you ate rocks, made pizza with glue, or drank your own urine in the process.

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