GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR Google’s AI Overviews are still showing signs of “chattiness.”
Instead of straight-up summarizing search results, the AI-generated responses may contain friendly remarks.
While the current situation is borderline funny, it could have serious repercussions for people who develop emotions for AI.
At I/O this year, Google sold the vision of a new Search, one that offers hyperpersonalized responses and gets a host of AI additives. As Google moves on to eliminate the distinction between Search and Gemini, it wants vanilla responses to be flavored by more personalized AI responses. But some of those may not be to everyone’s taste, especially when they deter users from getting the results they want. And we’re seeing fresh examples of that in action.
Google Search’s AI Overviews are once again showing their buried chatbot traits. Just like last month, when we learned that AI Overviews were getting perplexed by words such as “ignore” or “remember,” they’re repeating a similar pattern with phrases.
Redditor Timekiller_74 recently shared their experience of Google’s AI Overviews “flirting” with them. They had apparently searched for “you mean a lot to me,” expecting Google to tell them what the phrase implies, but instead got Gemini to bypass search results and tell them, “the feeling is mutual.” A typical search would show results about the phrase’s meaning and common usage — as it still does under the AI Overview. However, with the AI-generated section taking up a large chunk of the space, the useful results get overshadowed, prompting users to scroll more.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority? Set us as a favorite source in Google Discover to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more.
to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. You can also set us as a preferred source in Google Search by clicking the button below.
I tested searching for the phrase at my end and got similarly cheeky results. I tested similarly endearing phrases and got a blend of just responses with plain endearment, as well as some logical responses telling me about the meaning of the phrase.
... continue reading