Megan Ellis / Android Authority
A few months ago, I switched from Google to Brave on my Android phone. While I initially did this to force dark mode on my mobile browser and remove ads, I discovered plenty of benefits to using Brave over Chrome.
One of these is access to Brave’s search engine, which prioritizes higher quality results with fewer ads and sponsored results compared to Google Search. But as I’ve continued to use Brave Search across devices, I also realized something else: AI summaries don’t have to be terrible.
Do you find AI summaries useful for your search results? 24 votes Yes. 42 % No. 38 % Yes, but it depends on the AI providing the summaries. 21 %
Google’s AI Overviews are rife with mistakes
Andy Walker / Android Authority
There are several reasons I avoid most generative AI tools, but a major one is the accuracy of chatbot responses. Google’s AI Overviews perfectly encapsulate this problem; since their implementation, the summaries have often given me incorrect information.
The first obvious instance of this was when I was researching whether chronic migraines counted as a Prescribed Minimum Benefit (PMB) in South Africa. These are conditions that medical aids have to cover and I was struggling to find up-to-date information about this. Google delivered an AI Overview stating that the condition is a PMB, but linked to a blank page that had no information for its citation. As I continued to research, including discussing the topic with my neurologist, I confirmed that the information is incorrect. I was able to replicate the response for weeks, with the AI summaries only providing an accurate response recently.
AI summaries have gone viral on several occasions for incorrect responses.
The AI summaries incorrectly presented information on some of the games I play, as well as a procedure my cat has to undergo this month. These results always come with citations, even if the linked item doesn’t actually include this information. For example, when I looked up whether a cystocentesis on a cat involves shaving the stomach, the AI response stated that it may involve this step. I clicked on the citation to watch the YouTube video it linked to, but shaving the stomach wasn’t mentioned once.
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