5 Major Pitfalls of Google's New AI Overview
Google's AI Overviews: The Alarming Mistakes You Need to Know
At Google’s conference in the middle of the month, AI was very important. Google leaders said “AI” many times. This showed how crucial AI is for Google. To compete with OpenAI and Perplexity, Google updated its search engine in a big way after 25 years. The update is called “AI Overviews.” Millions of Google users will now see AI-written summaries at the top of their search results.
However, AI search is fast — just as fast as its failures. Within two weeks, the first wave of American users encountered a series of issues:
User Question: How to prevent cheese from falling off pizza?
AI Overviews: You can squeeze some glue on it to stick the sauce to the pizza base.
Interestingly, this suggestion was actually a comment made by a Reddit user 11 years ago.
AI Overviews is only in the U.S. now. In February, the news said Google worked with Reddit. Reddit is called “America’s Forum.” It is rumored Google paid $60 million for Reddit content.
Google and Reddit did not talk about this partnership. But the AI gives odd suggestions, like using glue on pizza and jumping off a bridge. This may be from Reddit’s “contribution.”
For a long time, ads used non-food items to look better visually. Google’s AI may have learned odd statements during training. This led to wrong connections. But Gemini did not have such silly responses. So Google’s search has unique problems.
If Google AI misunderstands Reddit jokes, it will likely misunderstand other things too.
User Question: How many rocks should I eat daily?
AI Overviews: According to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock a day.
The “UC Berkeley geologists” are not real. They are from a fake news story by The Onion. The Onion publishes made-up stories as jokes.
The story is funny. It says “Americans need more sediment in diets.” It says “Eat one small rock daily.” It makes fun of people who trust experts blindly.
The story says “Hide rocks in foods like peanut butter.” When published, some people tried eating big rocks. Geologists warned against this. Some people went to the hospital.
Clearly, Google’s AI Overviews has yet to grasp the concept of humor.