In the last few hours, social media has been flooded with bizarre examples of Google’s new AI Overviews feature, which suggested users put glue on pizza or eat leaves. The problematic launch of the AI-based search function presented at the last Google I/O forced the company to backtrack and start correcting the most bizarre answers one by one. Currently only available in the US, AI Overviews shows links to resources that support the information present on the engine’s search page, and delve further into the topic. The situation is particularly curious considering that Google has been testing the feature for a year, which was launched in beta in May 2023 as Search Generative Experience.
CEO Sundar Pichai said the company has handled more than a billion queries in that time, and also said Google has reduced the cost of providing AI answers by 80%, thanks to hardware and technical innovations. However, it seems that this optimization may have happened too early, before the technology was truly ready. Google finds itself in a difficult position. Microsoft Bing has moved ahead of Google in the field of AI, and OpenAI is working on its own search engine: the pressure to compete can lead to rushed and problematic releases. Google has big plans for AI Overviews, including the ability to perform complex reasoning for complex queries and generate AI-organized results pages. However, at the moment, the company’s reputation depends on being able to provide correct and reliable basic answers.
#Google #problems #suggests #putting #glue #pizza
