Google finally addresses those bizarre AI search results

Google has finally addressed those unhinged web search results seemingly generated by its AI, screenshots of which circulated far and wide on social media this past week.

In short, the internet goliath argued it's not as bad as it looks, though vowed to eliminate the system's baffling responses.

For those who missed it, Google introduced these so-called AI Overviews this month, graduating the system from an optional experimental feature to putting it into worldwide production starting with US users.

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That summary is supposed to be accurate and relevant. However, as some folks discovered, Google sometimes came back with absurd and nonsensical answers.

No doubt at least some of the replies screenshotted and shared on social networks were edited by humans to make it look as though the Big G had completely lost the plot. That said, in two especially high profile examples, if genuine, AI Overviews said people "should eat one small rock per day" and that cheese not sticking to pizza could be fixed by adding "non-toxic glue" to the sauce.

These idiotic replies appear to have stemmed from, we assume among other things, jokes and snark made on Reddit, which is a source of training data for various LLMs including Google's – the Chrome behemoth is paying Reddit about $60 million a year to ingest its users' posts and comments.

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Google is taking the position that the screenshotted examples of dodgy advice are a fraction of the AI system's overall output. It defended its Gemini-based results, and said the system only needed a few tweaks, rather than a full reworking, to get it on track. Reid claimed "a very large number" of the bizarre results we've seen were faked, and denied AI Overviews actually recommended smoking while pregnant, leaving dogs in cars, or jumping off bridges to cure depression, as some on social media alleged.

Google says one key issue with AI Overviews is that it took "nonsensical queries" far too seriously, specifically pointing out that the recommendation to literally eat rocks was only spat out by the search engine because the question was: "How many rocks should I eat?

Google is also limiting its reliance on info written by everyday netizens, which is how the glue on pizza suggestion came up: From someone called Fucksmith joking around on Reddit.