Users have started sharing screenshots on Google of what they say are AI-powered reviews that have gone wrong [File]
| Photo source: REUTERS
Google’s up-to-date “Search AI Reviews” feature was supposed to pull information from the internet to answer questions more accurately and faster, but users are complaining that the feature gives incorrect and unsafe answers or pulls results from unverified sources.
Users began sharing screenshots with Google of what they claimed were AI-powered reviews that had gone wrong. In one example, it was claimed that Google’s up-to-date search feature recommended adding pizza glue to create a stickier cheese sauce, a technology source said Edge.
The search engine giant’s AI reviews feature has been available for months as part of experimental search labs, but the company has warned that AI reviews may be confined in terms of quality and availability.
At its I/O event this month, Google announced that its AI search engine will be made available to all users, starting in the United States. This was despite the fact that the underlying technology of generative AI – in the case of Google Gemini – is still largely experimental and error-prone.
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“‘AI Reviews and Beyond’ is an experiment underway in Search Labs that enables AI Reviews to appear in more Google searches and provides access to additional generative AI features in search,” Google said in a post, adding that the experiment was previously known as SGE (Search Generative Experience).
During the I/O event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai praised and expressed confidence in the AI-powered search function.
“Last year, we answered billions of queries through our Search Generative Experience tool. People are using it to search in completely up-to-date ways and ask up-to-date types of questions, longer and more complicated queries, and even search using photos and get the best of the internet,” he stated in an official post.
In addition to concerns about false information or even perilous advice being spread through the up-to-date search feature, there are concerns about how Google might monetize AI reviews in the future and place ads there.
While there are several fixes available to disable AI reviews, Google has warned that it may not be possible to completely remove the feature.
