{"id":24999,"date":"2024-05-25T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/107419782"},"modified":"2024-05-25T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T09:00:07","slug":"google-criticized-as-ai-overview-makes-obvious-errors-such-as-saying-former-president-obama-is-muslim-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/google-criticized-as-ai-overview-makes-obvious-errors-such-as-saying-former-president-obama-is-muslim-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Google criticized as AI Overview makes obvious errors, such as saying former President Obama is Muslim"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/image.cnbcfm.com\/api\/v1\/image\/107420142-1716584814147-gettyimages-1147600104-b76i5829_20190507102823813.jpeg?v=1716584834&amp;w=1920&amp;h=1080\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s been less than two weeks since <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-1\"><span class=\"waslinkname\">Google<\/span><span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> debuted &#8220;AI Overview&#8221; in Google Search, and public criticism has mounted after queries have returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature \u2014 without any way to opt out.<\/p>\n<p>AI Overview shows a quick summary of answers to search questions at the very top of Google Search. For example, if a user searches for the best way to clean leather boots, the results page may display an &#8220;AI Overview&#8221; at the top with a multistep cleaning process, gleaned from information it synthesized from around the web.<\/p>\n<p>But social media users have shared a wide range of screenshots showing the AI tool giving incorrect and controversial responses.<\/p>\n<p>Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and other companies are at the helm of a&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">generative AI<\/span>&nbsp;arms race as companies in seemingly every industry rush to add AI-powered chatbots and agents to avoid&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">being left behind<\/span>&nbsp;by competitors. The market is&nbsp;predicted to<span class=\"waslinkname\">&nbsp;top $1 trillion<\/span>&nbsp;in revenue within a decade.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some examples of errors produced by AI Overview, according to screenshots shared by users.<\/p>\n<p>When asked how many Muslim presidents the U.S. has had, AI Overview <span class=\"waslinkname\">responded<\/span>, &#8220;The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When a user searched for &#8220;cheese not sticking to pizza,&#8221; the feature <span class=\"waslinkname\">suggested<\/span> adding &#8220;about 1\/8 cup of nontoxic glue to the sauce.&#8221; Social media users found an <span class=\"waslinkname\">11-year-old Reddit comment<\/span> that seemed to be the source.<\/p>\n<p>Attribution can also be a problem for AI Overview, especially in attributing inaccurate information to medical professionals or scientists.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, when asked, &#8220;How long can I stare at the sun for best health,&#8221; the tool <span class=\"waslinkname\">said<\/span>, &#8220;According to WebMD, scientists say that staring at the sun for 5-15 minutes, or up to 30 minutes if you have darker skin, is generally safe and provides the most health benefits.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>When asked, &#8220;How many rocks should I eat each day,&#8221; the tool <span class=\"waslinkname\">said<\/span>, &#8220;According to UC Berkeley geologists, people should eat at least one small rock a day,&#8221; going on to list the vitamins and digestive benefits.<\/p>\n<p>The tool also can respond inaccurately to simple queries, such as <span class=\"waslinkname\">making up a list of fruits<\/span> that end with &#8220;um,&#8221; or saying the year 1919 was <span class=\"waslinkname\">20 years ago<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>When asked whether or not Google Search violates antitrust law, AI Overview <span class=\"waslinkname\">said<\/span>, &#8220;Yes, the U.S. Justice Department and 11 states are suing Google for antitrust violations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The day Google rolled out AI Overview at its annual Google I\/O event, the company said it also plans to introduce assistant-like planning capabilities directly within search. It explained that users will be able to search for something like, &#8220;Create a 3-day meal plan for a group that&#8217;s easy to prepare,&#8221; and they&#8217;d get a starting point with a wide range of recipes from across the web.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web,&#8221; a Google spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. &#8220;Many of the examples we&#8217;ve seen have been uncommon queries, and we&#8217;ve also seen examples that were doctored or that we couldn&#8217;t reproduce.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said AI Overview underwent extensive testing before launch and that the company is taking &#8220;swift action where appropriate under our content policies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The news follows Google&#8217;s high-profile rollout of Gemini&#8217;s <span class=\"waslinkname\">image-generation tool<\/span> in February, and a <span class=\"waslinkname\">pause that same month<\/span> after comparable issues.<\/p>\n<p>The tool allowed users to enter prompts to create an image, but almost immediately, users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses, which circulated widely on social media.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, when one user asked Gemini to show a German soldier in 1943, the tool depicted a&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">racially diverse set of soldiers<\/span>&nbsp;wearing German military uniforms of the era, according to screenshots on social media platform X.<\/p>\n<p>When asked for a &#8220;historically accurate depiction of a medieval British king,&#8221; the model generated another racially diverse set of images, including one of a woman ruler,&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">screenshots<\/span>&nbsp;showed. Users reported&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">similar outcomes<\/span>&nbsp;when they asked for images of the U.S. founding fathers, an 18th-century king of France, a German couple in the 1800s and more. The model showed an image of Asian men in response to a query about Google&#8217;s own founders, users reported.<\/p>\n<p>Google said in a statement at the time that it was working to fix Gemini&#8217;s image-generation issues, acknowledging that the tool was &#8220;missing the mark.&#8221; Soon after, the company announced it would immediately &#8220;pause the image generation of people&#8221; and &#8220;re-release an improved version soon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In February, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Google planned to relaunch its image-generation AI tool in the next &#8220;few weeks,&#8221; but it has not yet rolled out again.<\/p>\n<p>The problems with Gemini&#8217;s image-generation outputs reignited a debate within the AI industry, with some groups calling Gemini too &#8220;woke,&#8221; or left-leaning, and others saying that the company didn&#8217;t sufficiently invest in the right forms of AI ethics. Google came under fire in 2020 and 2021 for&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">ousting the co-leads<\/span>&nbsp;of its AI ethics group after they published a research paper critical of certain risks of such AI models and then later reorganizing the group&#8217;s structure.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, Sundar&nbsp;Pichai, CEO of Google&#8217;s parent company, Alphabet, was criticized by some employees for the company&#8217;s&nbsp;<span class=\"waslinkname\">botched and &#8220;rushed&#8221; rollout of Bard<\/span>, which followed the viral spread of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p><em>Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct name of Google&#8217;s AI Overview. Also, an earlier version of this article included a link to a screenshot that Google later confirmed was doctored.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been less than two weeks since Google debuted &#8220;AI Overview&#8221; in Google Search, and public criticism has mounted after queries have returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature \u2014 without any way to opt out. AI Overview shows a quick summary of answers to search questions at the very top of Google &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-24999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","has-thumb","has-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24999"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=24999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}