Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization’s website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.
This idea that “we’re all entitled to our opinion” is nonsense. That’s for when you’re a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It’s not for like policy or things that matter. You can’t just “it’s my opinion” your way through “this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I’m going to use it for my big website”. Or more on topic, you can’t use it for “these results are wrong but I like them better”
Traditional search often is also wrong, showing some 3rd party website or a link farm.
With AI search I get a summary AND the result list, so I have more info to make a decision.
Well, yes, Google has been becoming shittier for years as they prioritize ads and fail to deal with SEO slop. You have to know what’s a good source, but that was true even when we were doing research in libraries.
The AI summary is making the problem worse. The information it provides is not trustworthy. It also deprives site owners from traffic. It’s really bad on like every metric.
The AI summary is additive, I don’t see how it makes it worse. I find it useful to save time and it’s right in most cases, if I need something of vital importance (like the opening time for a shop) I don’t use search results anyway, I go to maps where I expect to find a link to their official website (not trusting the opening hours on maps either).
I don’t think it saves time on net if you have to read it and then go verify it anyway. Might as well go directly to the more trustworthy source in the first place! And if you don’t care if your answer is correct, why even search? Just make something up.
It’s just more convenient. I’m not usually Googling if a mushroom is poisonous, I’m Googling how to get the length of an array in python or something similar. If it doesn’t work, I come back and look at the second result, which happens less than once a week.