The tool was tested by Washington Post reporter Geoffrey A. Fowler, who found that despite extensive public testing, it stumbled on a simple question.
Google previously said it was “supercharging” and “improving” its search experience with an AI-infused generative version called Search Generative Experience (SGE).
The AI question answering tool is still an experiment. But as Fowler notes in a review published this week, that might have made him “dumber.”
In Google’s blog post last May announcing the rollout, it said: “With new generative AI capabilities in search, we’re now taking even more of the work out of searching, so you can understand a topic faster, discover new points of view and ideas, and get things done more easily.
Yet in Fowler’s analysis, SGE returned a response riddled with errors. The tech columnist looked up Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth and he responded: “$46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. That works out to $8,014 per month, $1,849 per week and $230.6 million per day.”
The numbers don’t add up, which may be worrying given that Google is considering whether to charge users for certain AI-based features, the Financial Times reported.
Paid subscribers will rightly expect reliable answers, especially those focused on some of the world’s best-known business figures.
The company told the FT: “Through our experiments with generative AI in search, we have already answered billions of queries and we are seeing positive growth in search queries across all our major markets. meet new user needs.
Google already gives subscribers to its One AI Premium plan access to its Gemini AI model in features like Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets and Meet.
But the company was forced to abandon part of the Gemini AI model earlier this year after a series of errors. Users complained that the image generation feature created historically inaccurate images of people of color.
Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, made outside of normal business hours.
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