- Google’s new AI Overviews feature has been generating bizarre responses, including advising users to add glue to homemade pizza.
- Other notable mistakes include claims that James Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsin 21 times and that a dog has played in major sports leagues.
- Google is addressing these issues by manually disabling AI Overviews for specific searches and refining the product based on these isolated incidents.
Google’s new AI Overviews feature has been generating bizarre and inaccurate responses, such as advising users to add glue to their pizza. Despite a year of testing, these issues have prompted Google to manually disable the feature for specific queries. The company is working to refine the product based on these incidents to improve its reliability.
The bizarre suggestion
“Add some glue,” Google answers. “Mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer’s glue in with the sauce. Non-toxic glue will work.”
So, yeah, don’t do that. As of writing this, though, that’s what Google’s new AI Overviews feature will tell you to do. The feature, while not triggered for every query, scans the web and drums up an AI-generated response. The answer received for the pizza glue query appears to be based on a comment from a user named “fucksmith” in a more than decade-old Reddit thread, and they’re clearly joking.
Other mistakes
This is just one of many mistakes cropping up in the new feature that Google rolled out broadly this month. It also claims that former US President James Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsin not once but 21 times, that a dog has played in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, and that Batman is a cop.
Google’s response
Google spokesperson Meghann Farnsworth said the mistakes came from “generally very uncommon queries, and aren’t representative of most people’s experiences.” The company has taken action against violations of its policies, she said, and is using these “isolated examples” to continue to refine the product.
Also read: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI search and the web’s future
