It’s not uncommon for an exciting new tech feature to debut with some bugs. But at least some of the problems with Google’s new generative-AI-powered search answers may not be fixable anytime soon, five AI experts told Tech Brief on Tuesday. Last week, Google’s new “AI Overviews” went viral for the wrong reasons. Hyped as the future of online search, the feature — in which Google’s software directly answers a user’s question, rather than just linking to relevant websites — spat out a slew of responses that ranged from absurd to dangerous. (No, geologists don’t recommend eating one small rock per day, and please don’t put glue in your pizza.) Google initially downplayed the problems, saying the vast majority of its AI Overviews are “high quality” and noting that some of the examples going around social media were probably fake. But the company also acknowledged that it was removing at least some of the problematic results manually, a laborious process for a site that fields billions of queries per day. “AI Overviews are designed to surface high quality information that’s supported by results from across the web, with prominent links to learn more,” spokesperson Ned Adriance said Tuesday. “As with other features we’ve launched in Search, we’re using feedback to help us develop broader improvements to our systems, some of which have already started to roll out.”
Full report : Google’s AI Overview problems may be unfixable, experts say.
