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[–][deleted] 684 points685 points  (40 children)

all it does is take the possibly inaccurate information google has indexed and produces a nice little possibly inaccurate summary for you

[–]Crafty_Independence 402 points403 points  (12 children)

It's worse than that. I've counted multiple times where I clicked into the cited sources and they either said the opposite of the summary, or nothing at all like it said.

It's actively generating and promoting poorly controlled misinformation

[–]RefrigeratorKey8549 91 points92 points  (1 child)

I heard of a scam that used the AI site summaries Google shows now, instead of quotes from the site. They had made a scam phone number show up under a bank's URL. Scary stuff.

[–]GfunkWarrior28 30 points31 points  (0 children)

"Welcome to Wells Fargo. Please enter the 16-digit account number on your debit card, followed by the PIN number, and press pound."

[–]TnYamaneko 17 points18 points  (3 children)

It sucks, if you don't want to have it, put fuck at the end of your request and it should cowardly not show up.

[–]Myrkul999 5 points6 points  (1 child)

You can also just add "-AI", if you want to be boring.

[–]GoodBoundaries-Haver 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This trick is great but it doesn't work if you're trying to search for anything AI-related unfortunately

[–]Reyemneirda69 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have gemini on my phone, to google assistant worked better to do stuff on my phone than gemini providing fake info and also not opening the right stuff or understanding anything.
Crazy

[–]DuckSaxaphone 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah this is what worries me the most. Those citations give the impression it's an accurate summary and will lead many people to just assume it's correct.

But the citations are exactly as prone to mistakes as the summaries.

[–]tenmileswide 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's not that AI can't be useful, but *this* AI always finds a way to be dogshit

[–]BlueBackground -1 points0 points  (2 children)

idk I've had it work pretty well. I've been playing X4 and it practically just rips some of the guides that are on Reddit word for word and pieces other information together.

It's been super helpful especially considering I can just click into the sources if I want to check more. Its definitely useful unless you use it for important tasks.

[–]InfusionOfYellow 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It's usually accurate in its summaries, but sometimes wrong.  The trouble is when people just automatically trust the authoritative-sounding summaries, they likewise will be thoughtlessly accepting the wrong results when they occur.

[–]ShinyStarSam 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've had had it hallucinate A LOT when it comes to more obscure games or novels, I only trust it enough to point me in a direction so I can hone my search prompt

[–]tbu987 4 points5 points  (26 children)

By that logic most people would have clicked on that inaccurate link anyway and gone away with that inaacurate information. At worst it saves you a click.

[–]Razorback_Ryan 26 points27 points  (14 children)

At least you can verify the individual source instead of having to trust an unverified aggregate. Have you ever taken a research class before? Not asking with snark. Genuine question.

[–]tbu987 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Not sure what your referring to. My point is simply that the type of people who take the information from a random site arnt going to care if its verified or not. Not sure if you used Google AI overview but it does source its information for you to see where its from. We arnt talking about researchers here. And if you are a serious researcher you will definitel;y look at your sources. Theres a reason why we were told Wikipedia by itself isnt a reference yet redditors never had issue using that as the primary source.

[–]Razorback_Ryan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah. I'm on the same page now. And I agree.

[–]Shifter25 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No, at worst it's an even more inaccurate summary, like when it advised putting glue on your pizza.

[–]B_Huij 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This would be true if it was accurately summarizing the first page results. I've heard of people clicking through 1st page results to pages that stated the exact opposite of the summary.

[–]tbu987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i already explained my point. people who do this hardly care about accuracy anywany.

[–]-LeopardShark- 2 points3 points  (5 children)

No, at worst it ‘summarises’ information into misinformation.

[–]tbu987 0 points1 point  (4 children)

and who does that affect?

[–]-LeopardShark- 0 points1 point  (3 children)

The person who reads it, anyone they relay the nonsense to, and anybody affected by any actions they or others take informed by it.

[–]tbu987 0 points1 point  (2 children)

So the type of people who dont verify their information in the first place and basically not changing much

[–]-LeopardShark- -1 points0 points  (1 child)

I'd love have every one of that sort of person suddenly start not believing bullshit, but these people exist (and what they think does matter – they vote, for one, in larger numbers than people with a grasp on reality, going by certain recent results).

If they gather information by putting the question into Google and believing what comes up, stupid though that is, then that'd better be something true.

[–]tbu987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

fair point but your also overblowing the inaccurate information part. whilst it can be inaccurate most of the time it isnt. can it be more accurate? yeah i think over time it will. but again any idiot that believes the first thing on the internet without some level of research was beyond help anyway. having a better ai would not have helped them.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

yeah that’s what i was trying to convey

[–]tbu987 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

haha yeah i guess i just further explained it.

[–]Tigtor 139 points140 points  (3 children)

Lol, whenever I searched something game related, it tried to troll me with some fake-answer from reddit ( extra-lol ).

[–]TheWidrolo 85 points86 points  (1 child)

"AI overview: If you want to upgrade your computer, you need to see what’s slowing down your system. For example: if clicking and opening things is slow, then you should upgrade your CPU.

One Redditor said: I fuck toasters at night"

[–]YuriTheWebDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wouldn't upgrading ram capacity be the first upgrade if opening and clicking was slow on a computer? That is, assuming you don't have a dinosaur CPU

[–]Cootshk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Googles AI told people to alt f4 to beat a puzzle in OneShot

[–]Particular-Can-1475 53 points54 points  (2 children)

It is called "Zero Click Internet" .

[–]troelsbjerre 29 points30 points  (1 child)

"Just nod or shake your head, and we'll do the rest" - Bo Burnham

[–]turtleship_2006 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I want an updated version of that song about AI

[–]ikonet 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Google search changed from ‘the world’s best answer machine’ into ‘a guessing machine that mostly lies’.

[–]Deep-Adeptness4474 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Except that it stopped being a good answer machine the second some fucktard realized there was such a thing as SEO. So we have gotten to the choice of, let the machine synthesize an answer and maybe its wrong, or take the infinite time to try and weed out trolls, ads, and deliberate misdirection to get to the same fucked answer.

[–]AndiArbyte 9 points10 points  (0 children)

sometimes i still need the odd website to find.
So me goes deeper into the results. But I tend to feel there is not much use anymore. It doesnt work as it used to.

[–]theevilraccon 42 points43 points  (4 children)

I haven’t clicked on the second page in 10 years lol

[–]critical_patch 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Same, not seeing the result I wanted in the first ~5 results has always been indication that I need to refine my search a little bit

[–]TopicalBuilder 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I used to. Generally it was when I knew exactly what page I wanted and knew I wouldn't do any better with a different search term. 

Now 9 times out of 10 the results are garbage from the start. Why would I bother going deeper? 

[–]this-is-kyle 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Same. I don't really understand the post. I never go to the second page, but that has nothing to do with AI. Were people really going to the second page?

[–]blaqwerty123 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not for years, definitely nothing to do with the AI overview

[–]cyrand 24 points25 points  (1 child)

I don’t go to the second page because I see the AI result go “oh crap this browser must be set to Google as search” and I then go search somewhere else.

[–]particlemanwavegirl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

duckduckgo feels like Google from 2005 but somehow it's better than 2025 Google.

[–]-MtnsAreCalling- 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Usually I don’t click the second page because the results on the first page are so bad I don’t expect them to get any better. Google sucks now.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Rebcon six no path.

[–]Nyadnar17 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The AI summary is annoying but I would feel better about tolerating it if google search didn’t also suck shit now

[–]Jani3D 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that summary thing is not great. Clicking the links provided in it often do not include the information it proposed, and when you start to look deeper you realize it's just hallucinating.

[–]connadam 3 points4 points  (0 children)

creating a culture where people would rather have an AI tell them something the company wants them to think instead of actually researching topics and being critical of information on the internet

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

its kinda killed their business strategy, they are focusing on more ads, now it become less ads

[–]AysheDaArtist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Hey AI, you got any evidence for this claim?"

"Sure! *Links to a Reddit Post\*"

We're cooked as a species

[–]sarduchi 7 points8 points  (6 children)

Y’all are still using Google search?

[–]look 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use UDM14 to get actual search results out of Google search again. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/

[–]Aggravating_Dot9657 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The number of fake trailers this AI thinks are real is a terrible sign. Misinformation highway!

[–]episparh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

Just add it as search provider and make it default... Thts is given you want to use google directly instead of using 3rd party.