Earlier this month, Google began rolling out its up-to-date Search Generatative Experience (SGE) tool, introducing AI-generated search results on some pages. Unfortunately, it appears that the up-to-date feature has already encountered a few issues, as reports indicate that it may promote scam and malware-pushing sites in the responses it generates.
This is obviously not a great look for AI-related Google search results, especially since many questions have been raised about it how profitable is Google’s artificial intelligenceincluding the fact that Google won’t put its latest models on top of the base Pixel 8. However, despite these concerns, Google continues to push ahead with its AI efforts, and it looks like there will simply be no end to the failed attempts.
How Shiny Computer Reports show that in various responses, Google search results appear to recommend spammy and malicious websites. This will make it much easier for users to fall for scams, especially if Google opens it up to a wider audience with varying levels of AI knowledge.
In a report by BleepingComputer, they noted that when they tried to search for puppies for sale, they quickly received AI-generated responses that pointed them to spam sites that could be full of malware. Clicking on any of these links indicated that the user would be redirected several times until they reached the scam site. Many sites have imitated YouTube push notifications in an attempt to trick users into allowing sites to notify them about various things. BleedingComputer claims that when they subscribed to one of the sites, they began receiving spam containing ads for tech support scams and phony prize sites claiming that the user had won something.
Please note that while researching this article, I enabled Google SGE in Chrome. However, no searches I entered yielded any responses of this type. In fact, all of my searches indicated that they couldn’t generate any AI responses, so it’s possible that Google is working on a fix. Still, it’s disappointing that it happened at all, reflecting the tech giant’s ongoing battle against spam and malware-riddled websites. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading BleepingComputer’s in-depth analysis as it provides many great first-hand experiences that unfortunately I can’t replicate because SGE won’t spit out any answers for me.
