Google's notorious AI Overviews feature appears to have finally gotten it right — but for all the wrong reasons.
As flagged on Bluesky, if you ask Google why its own search engine feels so useless lately, the company's AI feature will provide multiple and excoriating reasons — including brutal attacks against itself, Google's much-maligned AI Overviews.
In that Bluesky post, Google responded broadly to the hilariously colloquial query of "why is google ass now" with a self-flagellating list of bullet points. The AI's detailed rejoinder included charges that the search giant has been accused of prioritizing "AI-generated and SEO-optimized content" and that its "AI-generated answers" — yes, provided by the very entity answering the question — have sparked "accuracy concerns," including "instances where Google's AI provided harmful or nonsensical suggestions" as well as claims that are "inaccurate or misleading."
Inspired by the vulgarity, we asked Google why it's now "so f*cked up" — and got a similarly self-deprecating explanation that again demonstrated that the bot shows a striking lack of loyalty to its creator, or regard for its own reputation.
In its response to our query, the AI pointed out that the search engine is now "cluttered" with "ads and self-promotion." It also noted that Google has been criticized for "manipulation of search rankings" and ingesting "AI-generated content" — the same kind of comical self-criticism we've seen from various AI models time and again.
"The rise of AI-generated content can lead to low-quality, keyword-stuffed articles that rank highly but offer little genuine insight," AI Overviews said, adding that "Google's AI Overviews have also been criticized for providing inconsistent or overly simplistic advice based on questionable sources."
Curious about how Google might respond when asked a bit more politely about its recent losing streak, we dropped the obscenity and queried "why is google useless." Again, the response pointed to the same common critiques and flaws.
"Google's search engine is often criticized for being less effective at finding specific or complex information, with some users finding results cluttered with ads and irrelevant content," the response read. "This perception is influenced by... Google's shift towards AI-powered summaries that may not always be accurate or comprehensive."
It also offers suggestions for alternatives, pointing users to the competing search engines offered by Microsoft's Bing and DuckDuckGo.
AI Overviews has also been criticized for eviscerating traffic to news publications, by letting readers get the answers they're looking for without actually visiting — and thus supporting, via ads or subscriptions — the sites that actually did the work of providing the information.
... continue reading