Google’s new search feature, AI Overviews, seems to be going awry. The tool, which gives AI-generated summaries of search results, appeared to instruct a user to put glue on pizza when they searched for “cheese not sticking to pizza.” Business Insider reported.
A screenshot of the summary it generated, shared on X, shows it responded with “cheese can slide off pizza for a number of reasons,” and that the user could try adding “about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.”
According to another X user, the suggestion seems to have been based on a Reddit comment from 11 years ago, which was probably a joke.
Google started testing the AI Overviews feature in the US and UK earlier this year and announced it would roll out more widely by the end of 2024. Liz Reid, the head of search, introduced it as “Google will do the googling for you” at the company’s I/O conference last week.
Imagine this: you’ve carved out an evening to unwind and decide to make a homemade pizza. You assemble your pie, throw it in the oven, and are excited to start eating. But once you get ready to take a bite of your oily creation, you run into a problem — the cheese falls right off. Frustrated, you turn to Google for a solution. The Verge reported.
“Add some glue,” Google answers. “Mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer’s glue in with the sauce. Non-toxic glue will work.”
So, yeah, don’t do that, The Verge reported. As of writing this, though that’s what Google’s new AI Overviews feature will tell you to do. The feature, while not triggered for every query, scans the web and drums up an AI-generated response. The answer for the pizza glue query appears to be based on a comment from a user named “f***smith” in a more than decade-old Reddit thread, and they’re clearly joking.
This is just one of many mistakes cropping up in the new feature that Google rolled out broadly this month. It also claims that former US President James Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsin not once but 21 times, that a dog has played in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, and that Batman is a cop.
ArsTechnica reported Google’s AI Overview is a complete transformation of what Google Search is, changing from a product that searches the web to show relevant links, to a place that scrapes the web of information and shows it directly to users. Google is not done making changes, though, and the next for AI Overview is ads!
The Google Ads & Commerce blog shows what this will look like, with ads landing at the bottom of the AI Overview box. The overview box was already a massive, screen-filling box, and ads make it even longer, pushing what’s left of the web results even further down the page. Google’s demo shows the ads at the bottom of the overview box, and you have to scroll down to see them.
In my opinion, it seems like Google’s AI Overviews has taken the comments on Reddit and used them as a way to provide answers to those seeking help with their pizza. Clearly, Google’s AI Overviews are not ready to provide actual useful answers.
