ReportWire

Tag: search

  • USA Today Enters Its Gen AI Era With a Chatbot

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    The publishing company behind USA Today and 220 other publications is today rolling out a chatbot-like tool called DeeperDive that can converse with readers, summarize insights from its journalism, and suggest new content from across its sites.

    “Visitors now have a trusted AI answer engine on our platform for anything they want to engage with, anything they want to ask,” said Mike Reed, CEO of Gannett and the USA Today Network, at the WIRED AI Power Summit in New York, an event that brought together voices from the tech industry, politics, and the world of media, “and it is performing really great.”

    Most publishers have a fraught relationship with AI, as the chatbots that trained on their content are now summarizing it and eating the traffic that search engines used to send them.

    Reed said that Google’s AI Overview feature has dramatically cut traffic to publishers across the industry. “We are watching the same movie as everyone else is watching,” Reed said ahead of today’s announcement. “We can see some risk in the future to any content distribution model that is based primarily on SEO optimization.”

    Like other publishers, Gannett has signed some deals with AI companies, including Amazon and Perplexity, to license its content. The company actively blocks the web scrapers that crawl websites in order to steal content.

    DeeperDive represents a bet that harnessing the same generative artificial intelligence technology could help publishers capture readers attention by engaging with them in new ways.

    The tool replaces a conventional search box and automatically suggests questions that readers might want to ask. For example, today it offers as one prompt, “How does Trump’s Fed policy affect the economy?”

    DeeperDive generates a short answer to the query along with relevant stories from across the USA Today network. Reed says it is crucial that DeeperDive bases its output on factually correct information and does not draw from opinion pieces. “We only look at our real journalism,” he says.

    The interface of DeeperDive on the homepage of USA Today

    Photograph: USA Today

    Reed adds that his company hopes that the tool will also reveal more about readers’ interests. “That can help us from a revenue standpoint,” he said.

    DeeperDive was developed by the advertising company Taboola. Adam Singola, Taboola’s CEO, says his firm developed DeeperDive by fine-tuning several open source models.

    Singola says DeeperDive benefits from data gathered from across its own network of more than 600 million daily readers across around 11,000 publishers. He says the tool “grounds every answer in articles retrieved from our publisher partners and requires sentence-level citations to those sources” and will avoid generating an output if information from two sources seems to conflict.

    Gannett’s CEO Reed said ahead of today’s event that, together with Taboola, his firm is interested in exploring agentic tools for readers’ shopping decisions. “Our audiences have a higher intent to purchase to begin with,” he says. “That’s really the next step here.”

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    Will Knight

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  • How to See WIRED in Your Google Searches

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    As you’ve probably noticed, Google has gotten … weird lately. Weirder? It can be hard to find the search results you’re looking for. Between AI summaries and algorithm changes resulting in unexpected sources, it can be tricky to navigate the most popular search engine in the world. (And publishers are feeling the strain, too.)

    Earlier this year, Google updated its algorithm. This is nothing new—Google updates its algorithms hundreds of times per year, with anywhere from two to four major “core updates” that result in significant changes. And while it’s tricky to determine exactly what changed, publishers and websites large and small noticed significant traffic drops and lower search rankings—even for content that had previously been doing well. “Google Zero” (as Nilay Patel of The Verge first called it) is thought to be caused, at least in part, by AI overviews.

    Google Search has shown a slow crawl toward this for a couple of years, but the most recent blow was delivered over the summer. When you search for something and you get a neat little summary of various reporting completed by journalists, you’re less likely to visit the websites that actually did the work. And, in some instances, that summary contains incorrect AI hallucinations or reporting from websites you might not trust as much. It’s hard to say whether the next core update will make your search results show what you expect, but in the meantime, there’s a tweak that can help it feel more tailored to your preferences.

    Take back control of your Google search results with the new Google “Preferred Sources” tool. This can help you see more of WIRED, from our rigorous and obsessive Reviews coverage to the important breaking stories on our Politics desk to our Culture team’s “What to Watch” roundups. (And, yes, this works for other publishers you know and trust, too.)

    Preferred Sources are prioritized in Top Stories search results, and you’ll also get a dedicated From Your Sources section on some search results pages.

    To set WIRED as a Preferred Source, you can click this link and check the box to the right. You can also search for additional sources you prefer on this page and check the respective boxes to make sure they’re prioritized in your Google searches.

    Google via Louryn Strampe

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    Louryn Strampe

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  • Infant Emmanuel Haro may have died days before being reported missing, prosecutors say

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    Emmanuel Haro, the infant who was at the center of a weeklong missing persons investigation, may have died more than a week before the day he was reported missing, according to Riverside County prosecutors.

    In the criminal complaints filed against Emmanuel’s parents, Rebecca and Jake Haro,prosecutors list the potential date of death for 7-month-old Emmanuel as anywhere between Aug. 5 and Aug. 14, the day his mother said he vanished. The parents have been charged with one count each of murder with malice.

    According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Rebecca Haro said she was attacked in a Yucaipa parking lot Aug. 14 outside a Big 5 store while changing Emmanuel’s diaper. She told them that when she woke up, her child was gone. But investigators said there were inconsistencies in her initial statement, and when they confronted her about those details, they said she stopped cooperating.

    Seven-month-old Emmanuel Haro.

    (San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department)

    In an interview with KTLA-TV before her arrest, Haro, who had a black eye, pleaded for the return of her son. “If you know anything, please come forward or take him to the cops,” she said. “Please come and bring my son back. I’m begging you.”

    During the investigation, the couple surrendered their phones to investigators and allowed detectives to search their Cabazon home, said attorney Vincent Hughes, who represents Jake Haro in a separate criminal case. Investigators also took two iPads, including one that had not been taken out of the box, and three Xbox video game consoles. Their vehicle was also taken by investigators as part of the search for their son, according to Hughes.

    Sheriff's investigators at the Cabazon home of 7-month-old Emmanuel Haro on Aug. 22.

    Sheriff’s investigators at the Cabazon home of 7-month-old Emmanuel Haro on Aug. 22.

    (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

    The Haros were arrested at their home Friday. Authorities said they faked the story about a mysterious attacker who abducted their son.

    “It is believed Emmanuel is deceased and the search to recover his remains is ongoing,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “While these arrests mark a significant development, our focus remains on finding Emmanuel.”

    Sheriff’s investigators are now focused on finding Emmanuel’s remains. Over the weekend, search teams scoured an isolated field in Moreno Valley. They were accompanied by Jake Haro but did not find anything, officials said.

    The couple is being held in lieu of $1 million bail each. They are scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 4.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • How to Unlock Profitable SEO as AI Search Engines Take Over | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As AI technology continues to grow in capability and popularity, the online search landscape and search optimization are rapidly changing. AI search engines, including Perplexity, Google’s AI mode, ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Arc Search and others, are competing for their share of searches and are quickly catching up to traditional search engines.

    In fact, one study projected that AI search engines may have more users than traditional search engines by 2028. These constantly changing search dynamics have many businesses wondering whether their current SEO strategy is sufficient or whether they need to adapt to stay relevant. While many SEO strategies can help businesses rank in both traditional and AI search engines, there are some key techniques businesses can implement to ensure that the evolution of AI search engines does not leave them behind.

    Related: Want to Be Discovered in AI Search? These Are the Sources That Matter

    The increasing popularity of AI search engines

    AI search engines are generative AI platforms that create answers to queries entered by users. Rather than simply presenting results, like traditional search engines, AI search engines summarize and present information pulled from multiple sources. AI search engines are quickly becoming the first choice for many users.

    Rather than using a traditional search engine, people prefer to use AI search engines for more specific, conversational queries. AI search engines consolidate and summarize information, which appeals to many users, particularly when they have a longer, more specific search query or are researching a new topic. Users can also utilize AI search engines to compare products or generate a list of multiple service providers without needing to visit various websites.

    4 strategies for ranking in AI search engines

    AI Search engines cite the websites they pull information from. Having your website cited as a source is an effective way to generate organic traffic and increase leads. Fortunately, many of the SEO strategies that are effective for ranking in traditional SERPs remain effective for ranking in AI search engines. Additionally, search engines pay attention to ranking positions when they select websites to pull information from and cite. However, for businesses looking to stay ahead of their competition, here are a few strategies that we implement at Outpace SEO to make sure our clients rank in AI search engines as well as traditional SERPs.

    1. Audit your strategy

    AI search engines prioritize credibility and relevancy. Before you begin, audit your current SEO strategy and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Who is your target audience, and are they likely to use AI search engines? Are you hoping to rank nationally or locally? Answering these questions can help you adapt your strategy for continued success.

    2. Ensure visibility

    It’s essential to make sure that AI search engines can index your website and easily understand the context and relevance of your content. In-depth technical SEO is crucial to ensure that your website is visible to the relevant search engines. Some search engines have specific primary crawlers that need to be enabled in your robots.txt file. Make sure that your pages are indexed by Bing, not just Google. Your site should have a simple and easy-to-understand site architecture that allows AI engines to navigate it effectively. Other technical strategies include optimizing alt text, URLs, meta titles, page speed and internal linking to enhance your website’s visibility.

    Related: How AI Is Transforming the SEO Landscape — and Why You Need to Adapt

    3. Create concise, organized content

    AI search engines summarize information in conversational language. This means that they can more easily extract information from websites that provide clear and concise content. Answering questions clearly in a sentence or two increases the chance that AI search engines will cite your website in answers to search queries. Creating content that is clearly organized with header tags is an effective way to make sure that users and search engines can easily skim your content and identify its relevance. Using high-volume, long-tail keywords as titles and headers also increases the chance that AI search engines will use your content when they generate answers to popular questions. How you write your content can significantly increase your chances of ranking both in traditional search engines and AI search engines.

    4. Build online authority

    Both traditional search engines and AI search engines are more likely to rank your website if it has a strong online presence. AI search engines pay particular attention to websites with regularly updated content and a strong off-page authority. The type of brand mentions and backlinks you acquire is also significant; backlinks from websites in your industry with strong domain authority will do more to boost your website’s profile than links that are irrelevant or appear untrustworthy. By consistently creating on-site and off-site content, you can establish authority and credibility within your industry, resulting in increased rankings, leads and traffic.

    Final thoughts

    As more people use AI search engines, it may not be enough for businesses to simply rank on SERPs. If your target audience is likely to use an AI search engine to find businesses, information and products, then it’s essential to adapt your SEO strategies to rank in AI search engines as well as traditional search engine results pages. By creating content strategically, implementing technical optimizations on your website and developing your online authority, you can provide your business with a competitive edge and keep up with rapidly advancing AI technology.

    As AI technology continues to grow in capability and popularity, the online search landscape and search optimization are rapidly changing. AI search engines, including Perplexity, Google’s AI mode, ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Arc Search and others, are competing for their share of searches and are quickly catching up to traditional search engines.

    In fact, one study projected that AI search engines may have more users than traditional search engines by 2028. These constantly changing search dynamics have many businesses wondering whether their current SEO strategy is sufficient or whether they need to adapt to stay relevant. While many SEO strategies can help businesses rank in both traditional and AI search engines, there are some key techniques businesses can implement to ensure that the evolution of AI search engines does not leave them behind.

    Related: Want to Be Discovered in AI Search? These Are the Sources That Matter

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

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    Summit Ghimire

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  • iAsk Surpasses Half a Billion Searches

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    iAsk.Ai is Becoming One of the Fastest-Growing AI Answer Engines


    CHICAGO, March 19, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    iAsk’s groundbreaking answer engine, iAsk Ai , has reached a significant milestone: over half a billion searches processed .
    The Ask AI platform currently processes over 1.5 million searches daily, demonstrating explosive growth as users turn to novel AI Answer Engines.

    Since its launch, iAsk has been transforming how people access information by providing instant, factual, and highly relevant direct answers without the clutter of traditional search engines. Unlike conventional search engines that rely on keyword-based ranking and paid advertisements, iAsk leverages transformer neural networks to deliver precise, well-sourced responses that align with user intent.

    As users become increasingly frustrated with outdated or irrelevant search results, iAsk has emerged as the preferred choice for students, young professionals, and researchers who require reliable answers. The platform eliminates the need to sift through pages of search results by providing direct answers using the most trustworthy information.

    “ Surpassing half a billion searches is a testament to how people are shifting away from traditional search engines and embracing AI-powered solutions ,” said iAsk’s CEO and co-founder Dominik Mazur . “ Users want truthful and unbiased answers without the frustration of multiple search attempts or sifting through various websites. “

    For example, a search for “ best productivity hacks for students ” doesn’t just return a list of web pages and sponsored links. Instead, iAsk analyzes the most authoritative sources, real-world data, the live internet, and current trends to generate well-researched, fact-based answers with related images, videos, and searches.

    With rapid user adoption and growing momentum, iAsk is on track to reach a billion searches in 2025 . The company’s mission is to provide truthful answers to any questions users ask, saving thousands of hours of research.

    “ We are committed to making information easily understandable for everyone ,” Mazur added. “ The growth we’ve seen has been organic, driven primarily by word of mouth, and that speaks volumes about the demand for a smart AI answer engine that increases productivity. “

    As AI technology advances, iAsk focuses on improving its answer relevance, user experience, and a suite of AI productivity tools. With its expanding user base and ongoing AI enhancements, the platform is set to play a leading role in the future of AI search.

    For more information, visit Ask AI .

    Contact Information

    Rahul Srivathsa
    Marketing Manager
    rahul@iask.ai
    888-765-4564

    Phillip DeRenzo
    Head of Marketing at iAsk
    phillip@iask.ai
    888-765-4564

    Source: AI SEARCH INC

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  • Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity Are Promoting Scientific Racism in Search Results

    Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity Are Promoting Scientific Racism in Search Results

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    Google added that part of the problem it faces in generating AI Overviews is that, for some very specific queries, there’s an absence of high quality information on the web—and there’s little doubt that Lynn’s work is not of high quality.

    “The science underlying Lynn’s database of ‘national IQs’ is of such poor quality that it is difficult to believe the database is anything but fraudulent,” Sear said. “Lynn has never described his methodology for selecting samples into the database; many nations have IQs estimated from absurdly small and unrepresentative samples.”

    Sear points to Lynn’s estimation of the IQ of Angola being based on information from just 19 people and that of Eritrea being based on samples of children living in orphanages.

    “The problem with it is that the data Lynn used to generate this dataset is just bullshit, and it’s bullshit in multiple dimensions,” Rutherford said, pointing out that the Somali figure in Lynn’s dataset is based on one sample of refugees aged between 8 and 18 who were tested in a Kenyan refugee camp. He adds that the Botswana score is based on a single sample of 104 Tswana-speaking high school students aged between 7 and 20 who were tested in English.

    Critics of the use of national IQ tests to promote the idea of racial superiority point out not only that the quality of the samples being collected is weak, but also that the tests themselves are typically designed for Western audiences, and so are biased before they are even administered.

    “There is evidence that Lynn systematically biased the database by preferentially including samples with low IQs, while excluding those with higher IQs, for African nations,” Sears added, a conclusion backed up by a preprint study from 2020.

    Lynn published various versions of his national IQ dataset over the course of decades, the most recent of which, called “The Intelligence of Nations,” was published in 2019. Over the years, Lynn’s flawed work has been used by far-right and racist groups as evidence to back up claims of white superiority. The data has also been turned into a color-coded map of the world, showing sub-Saharan African countries with purportedly low IQ colored red compared to the Western nations, which are colored blue.

    “This is a data visualization that you see all over [X, formerly known as Twitter], all over social media—and if you spend a lot of time in racist hangouts on the web, you just see this as an argument by racists who say, ‘Look at the data. Look at the map,’” Rutherford says.

    But the blame, Rutherford believes, does not lie with the AI systems alone, but also with a scientific community that has been uncritically citing Lynn’s work for years.

    “It’s actually not surprising [that AI systems are quoting it] because Lynn’s work in IQ has been accepted pretty unquestioningly from a huge area of academia, and if you look at the number of times his national IQ databases have been cited in academic works, it’s in the hundreds,” Rutherford said. “So the fault isn’t with AI. The fault is with academia.”

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    David Gilbert

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  • Google begins wide rollout of ads in AI overview search results

    Google begins wide rollout of ads in AI overview search results

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    Alphabet Inc.’s Google is beginning a wide rollout of ads that will be displayed within and alongside the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some search results — a move meant to show investors that costly artificial intelligence projects can generate revenue.

    Some investors have worried that generative AI, the tech that underpins Google’s AI summaries, could cannibalize the tech giant’s search business, which is still by far its most lucrative unit. The company said in May that it would start testing ads in these search summaries, called AI Overviews, and now it’s rolling the feature out to anyone in the US using Google’s mobile app.

    Sponsored panels placed above, below and within the summaries have begun suggesting products related to the search query. At a demonstration for reporters held ahead of the announcement, searching “how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?” yielded AI-generated instructions followed by ads for Tide and OxiClean laundry products.

    The company will not share ad revenue with publishers whose material is cited in AI Overviews, a company spokesperson said.

    Google places its AI Overviews, which summarize the contents of search results, at the top of the page for some queries. First introduced in May, they were criticized for displaying inaccurate information and reducing the need to click through to cited websites that would earn ad revenue from visits. 

    The company has been under pressure to prove that it doesn’t have an unfair advantage over competitors in the search and advertising technology markets, which could have implications for its progress in AI. The US Justice Department in recent years brought two antitrust cases against the company, with a judge ruling in August that Google illegally monopolized the search business. The DOJ is considering seeking remedies including forcing the search giant to share precious search data with competitors — which they could use to bolster their own AI tools and services — and even breaking up the company, Bloomberg has reported. In a separate case, the DOJ leveled similar charges against Google’s ad tech unit. That trial wrapped up late last month.

    In a separate announcement on Thursday, the search giant also said it will start adding inline links to sources used in AI-generated summaries, and initial tests showed these links sent more traffic to websites compared to the old design with links at the bottom, said Rhiannon Bell, Google Search’s vice president of user experience, during the media demonstration.

    In addition, Google will begin sorting search results into scrollable lists of suggestions tailored to the user’s query and account history. “AI-organized search results,” as the company calls the feature, will initially be limited to suggesting recipes to American users of Google’s mobile app.

    The company also said that Google Lens, the visual search app, will now be able to process video and voice input in addition to photos and text.

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    Curtis Heinzl, Bloomberg

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  • Google’s Visual Search Can Now Answer Even More Complex Questions

    Google’s Visual Search Can Now Answer Even More Complex Questions

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    When Google Lens was introduced in 2017, the search feature accomplished a feat that not too long ago would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction: Point your phone’s camera at an object and Google Lens can identify it, show some context, maybe even let you buy it. It was a new way of searching, one that didn’t involve awkwardly typing out descriptions of things you were seeing in front of you.

    Lens also demonstrated how Google planned to use its machine learning and AI tools to ensure its search engine shows up on every possible surface. As Google increasingly uses its foundational generative AI models to generate summaries of information in response to text searches, Google Lens’ visual search has been evolving, too. And now the company says Lens, which powers around 20 billion searches per month, is going to support even more ways to search, including video and multimodal searches.

    Another tweak to Lens means even more context for shopping will show up in results. Shopping is, unsurprisingly, one of the key use cases for Lens; Amazon and Pinterest also have visual search tools designed to fuel more buying. Search for your friend’s sneakers in the old Google Lens, and you might have been shown a carousel of similar items. In the updated version of Lens, Google says it will show more direct links for purchasing, customer reviews, publisher reviews, and comparative shopping tools.

    Lens search is now multimodal, a hot word in AI these days, which means people can now search with a combination of video, images, and voice inputs. Instead of pointing their smartphone camera at an object, tapping the focus point on the screen, and waiting for the Lens app to drum up results, users can point the lens and use voice commands at the same time, for example, “What kind of clouds are those?” or “What brand of sneakers are those and where can I buy them?”

    Lens will also start working over real-time video capture, taking the tool a step beyond identifying objects in still images. If you have a broken record player or see a flashing light on a malfunctioning appliance at home, you could snap a quick video through Lens and, through a generative AI overview, see tips on how to repair the item.

    First announced at I/O, this feature is considered experimental and is available only to people who have opted into Google’s search labs, says Rajan Patel, an 18-year Googler and a cofounder of Lens. The other Google Lens features, voice mode and expanded shopping, are rolling out more broadly.

    The “video understanding” feature, as Google calls it, is intriguing for a few reasons. While it currently works with video captured in real time, if or when Google expands it to captured videos, entire repositories of videos—whether in a person’s own camera roll or in a gargantuan database like Google—could potentially become taggable and overwhelmingly shoppable.

    The second consideration is that this Lens feature shares some characteristics with Google’s Project Astra, which is expected to be available later this year. Astra, like Lens, uses multimodal inputs to interpret the world around you through your phone. As part of an Astra demo this spring, the company showed off a pair of prototype smart glasses.

    Separately, Meta just made a splash with its long-term vision for our augmented reality future, which involves mere mortals wearing dorky glasses that can smartly interpret the world around them and show them holographic interfaces. Google, of course, already tried to realize this future with Google Glass (which uses fundamentally different technology than that of Meta’s latest pitch). Are Lens’ new features, coupled with Astra, a natural segue to a new kind of smart glasses?

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    Lauren Goode

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  • Google’s Next Antitrust Trial Could Make Online Ads Less Annoying

    Google’s Next Antitrust Trial Could Make Online Ads Less Annoying

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    Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

    For years, Google publically has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

    Deep Control

    The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

    Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

    The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

    Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

    If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

    Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

    But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • How Israel Is Exploiting Google Ads to Discredit a UN Aid Agency

    How Israel Is Exploiting Google Ads to Discredit a UN Aid Agency

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    What Kronenfeld says truly worries her is that Americans are being exposed to Israel’s propaganda while trying to understand UNRWA’s role in the ongoing crisis. Beside the search ads, Israel has aired video ads in the US through Google that say “UNRWA is inseparable from Hamas” and that it “keeps employing terrorists.” Public misunderstanding could further jeopardize support from the US government, which until the war had been the largest donor to UNRWA.

    “There is an incredibly powerful campaign to dismantle UNRWA,” Kronenfeld says. “I want the public to know what’s happening and the insidious nature of it, especially at a time when civilian lives are under attack in Gaza.”

    Google spokesperson Jacel Booth tells WIRED that governments can run ads that adhere to the company’s policies and that users and employees are welcome to report alleged violations. “We enforce them consistently and without bias,” Booth says of the rules. “If we find ads that violate those policies, we take swift action.”

    The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York acknowledged but did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story over the past four months.

    UNRWA Takes Action

    Using nearly $1.5 billion annually in donor support, UNRWA employs about 30,000 people to educate, feed, and provide care for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and neighboring areas. UNRWA supporters say Israel doesn’t like that the agency preserves Palestinians’ refugee status, which arguably gives them a better shot at reclaiming occupied land someday.

    Israel for decades has accused UNRWA of standing in the way of lasting peace by protecting Hamas and enabling the US-designated terrorist organization to indoctrinate generation after generation with hateful ideology.

    The agency has acted in response to Israel’s accusations. UNRWA this year has fired 13 employees, including nine whom an oversight body determined may have been involved in last year’s Hamas attack based on evidence provided by Israel. The US has paused funding to UNRWA since January, while other countries that cut off dollars to the agency this year, including Germany and Switzerland, pledged to reopen the spigot.

    UNRWA’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has said that his organization plays a neutral and vital role in the region and that it engages in screening and training to keep Hamas sympathizers out of its ranks.

    Kronenfeld, who is Jewish, says Lazzarini’s transparency and good-faith efforts have left her feeling comfortable about her role. She joined UNRWA USA in 2020 because her grandfather had escaped Nazi Germany and instilled in her that no one should be brutalized ever again based on where they were born. Among her initiatives was ramping up online advertising, with the aim of bringing in at least $3.90 for every $1 spent.

    Driven by the war, the return on investment has been $25 on every $1 spent this year, but the competition from Israel on Google has meant UNRWA USA is winning fewer advertising auctions and likely getting its message shown to fewer users.

    After Kronenfeld and colleagues complained to Google in January about Israeli ads featuring headlines such as “UNRWA for Human Rights,” they say a company representative told them, without providing a reason, that the ads in question had been removed. Google’s Booth says there was no policy violation.

    By May, per screenshots seen by WIRED, Israel was back to promoting the same content but with tweaked verbiage—“UNRWA Neutrality Compromised,” “Israel Unveils UNRWA Issues,” and “Israel Advocates for Safer, Transparent Humanitarian Practices”—that more clearly previewed what users would get if they clicked.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • A US Judge Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist. Here’s What Might Come Next

    A US Judge Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist. Here’s What Might Come Next

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    But if Mehta pursues the approach, he should make some improvements on the EU’s rules, says Kamyl Bazbaz, senior vice president of public affairs at DuckDuckGo. Users should be prompted with the choice screen periodically, not just once, Bazbaz says. They shouldn’t have to deal with popups from Google urging them to switch the default to Google, he adds. And when users first interact with a competing search app, there should be an easy way to set it as the default app.

    With these added measures, some searchers could find themselves more reliably ditching Google. Others could be frustrated by the recurring requests.

    Order a Divestiture

    Contract bans and choice screens are examples of conduct remedies. But the Justice Department in recent years has expressed a preference for what are known as structural remedies, or breaking off parts of a company.

    Most famous is the breakup of telephone giant Bell in the 1980s, creating a variety of independent companies, including AT&T. But courts aren’t always on board. When Microsoft lost an antitrust battle in the 1990s, a federal appeals panel rejected an order to break up the company, and Microsoft eventually settled on a range of conduct changes.

    A one-time sale is preferred by regulators in part because it doesn’t require them to invest in monitoring the ongoing compliance of companies in terms of conduct remedies. It’s a much cleaner break, and some antitrust experts contend that structural remedies are more effective.

    The challenge is figuring out what parts of a company need to be separated. John Kwoka, an economics professor at Northeastern University who recently served as an adviser to FTC chair Lina Khan, says the key is identifying businesses in which ownership by Google are “distorting its incentives.” He says that, for instance, breaking off search could open the door to Google’s Android partnering with a different search engine.

    But Hovenkamp doubts the potential of a search sell-off to increase competition because the service would remain popular. “Selling Google Search would just transfer the dominance to another firm,” he says. “I don’t know what sort of breakup would work.”

    Some financial analysts who study Google parent Alphabet are also skeptical. “Alphabet’s scale, continued strong execution, and financial strength mitigate this legal risk and the possible ensuing financial and business model ramifications,” Emile El Nems, vice president for Moody’s Ratings, said in a press statement.

    Other legal experts envision a future in which search results would come from Google and the ads in the experience from another company that’s spun off from Google. It’s unclear how that remedy would affect users, but it’s possible ads could end up being less relevant and more intrusive.

    Force Google to Share

    Mehta found in his judgment that Google provides users a superior experience because it receives billions of more queries than any other search engine, and that data fuels improvements to the algorithms that decide which results to show for a particular query.

    Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt University following the Google case, says one of the most aggressive remedies would be requiring Google to share data or algorithms with its search competition so they too could improve. “Courts do not like to force sharing between rivals like that, but on the other hand, the judge seemed very concerned about how Google’s conduct has deprived its rivals of what they really need to compete—scale in search data,” she says. “Forcing data sharing would directly address that concern.”

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Google Search Is an Illegal Monopoly, US Judge Rules

    Google Search Is an Illegal Monopoly, US Judge Rules

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    Google is now 0 for 2 in antitrust trials. United States District judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday that Google has unlawfully maintained its dominance in search by using anticompetitive deals to keep rivals from gaining traction. And without fear of pressure from competitors, Google has been able to charge whatever it wants for search ads, he said.

    “The trial evidence firmly established that Google’s monopoly power, maintained by the exclusive distribution agreements, has enabled Google to increase text ads prices without any meaningful competitive constraint,” Mehta wrote in a 286-page ruling. “Unconstrained price increases have fueled Google’s dramatic revenue growth and allowed it to maintain high and remarkably stable operating profits.”

    His findings are arguably the most comprehensive modern examination of Google’s search business, which over the past 26 years has become a $175 billion annual revenue behemoth that accounts for much of parent company Alphabet’s profits. Google will appeal, as it risks losing its prominent placement on iPhones and other gateways to the web.

    Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a statement that the company would fight the ruling because it “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

    United States Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision “an historic win.” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said it “paves the path for innovation for generations to come.”

    The ruling follows a weeks-long trial in Mehta’s courtroom last year in Washington, DC, in which the US Department of Justice alleged that Google had become the world’s most used search engine by paying partners such as Apple and Samsung to promote it on their devices and software. Google had attributed its success to providing the best service and argued that it faced significant competition from the likes of Microsoft and others.

    Mehta sided with Google on some issues but rejected its overall argument that the company held no illegal monopoly whatsoever. Last year, a jury in federal court in San Francisco ruled Google’s Play app store an illegal monopolist.

    The ways in which Google will have to adjust its business in light of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington are yet to be determined. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine remedies in the search case, and a judge is mulling proposed penalties in the Play litigation. But some changes Google has made in response to antitrust scrutiny in recent years have been costly.

    First Trial

    The case before Mehta traced back to the increased oversight of the tech industry under then president Donald Trump. The Justice Department sued Google in 2020 before Trump left office, and the lawsuit became the first of several against Big Tech companies to go to trial.

    Mehta ruled that Google, with about 90 percent market share, has monopoly power in both general search and general search text ads. He found that Google’s deals with partners harm competition and that Google hadn’t shown otherwise.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • SearchGPT Is OpenAI’s Direct Assault on Google

    SearchGPT Is OpenAI’s Direct Assault on Google

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    After months of speculation about its search ambitions, OpenAI has revealed SearchGPT, a “prototype” search engine that could eventually help the company tear off a slice of Google’s lucrative business.

    OpenAI said that the new tool would help users find what they are looking for more quickly and easily by using generative AI to gather links and answer user queries in a conversational tone. SearchGPT could eventually be integrated into OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot. In addition to a broader web search, the search engine will tap into information provided by publishers who have signed deals giving OpenAI access to their data.

    Kayla Wood, a spokesperson for OpenAI, declined to provide a SearchGPT demo or an interview about the new tool for WIRED, but confirmed that the company has already given access to unnamed partners and publishers and improved aspects of the search engine based on their feedback.

    Microsoft, an investor in OpenAI, was one of the first companies to release a generative AI search engine to the public when it launched an AI-powered version of Bing back in 2023 that relied on OpenAI’s large language models. That AI search experience from Microsoft has since been rebranded to Copilot.

    Since then, multiple competitors, like Google and Perplexity, have launched their own AI search experiences for users. Google’s AI Overviews provide AI-generated summaries of articles, often at the top of news results. OpenAI’s SearchGPT appears more similar to Perplexity’s approach, where the chatbot provides an accompanying list of relevant links and the user can ask follow-up questions.

    After OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT in November 2022, early users saw in the chatbot’s ability to dig up and summarize information from the web a potential replacement for conventional web search. The shortcomings of large language models make chatbots imperfect search tools, however. The models draw on training data that is often months or years out of date, and when unsure of an answer they will make up facts.

    Microsoft’s early efforts with Bing were far from a success, with the AI-powered search engine producing strange, inappropriate, and incorrect answers. Bing’s market share grew only slightly following the overhaul.

    When Google added AI Overviews to search results this May, the company also quickly ran into reliability problems, like recommending people add glue to pizza. OpenAI’s SearchGPT may use an approach to generative AI, called retrieval augmented generation, that is an industry standard for AI search and designed to lower the rate of hallucinations in chatbot answers. With a RAG approach, the AI tool references trusted information, like a preferred news website, while generating its output and links back to where the data originated.

    There’s also the question of potential copyright violations. Perplexity in particular has been criticized by publications, including WIRED, for copying aspects of original journalism with its AI search tool and seeming to ignore requests not to take content from some websites. In OpenAI’s blog post, the company mentions its commitment to publishers: “SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches.” Multiple companies, including Vox Media, The Atlantic, News Corp, and the Financial Times, have all signed licensing agreements with OpenAI this year.

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    Reece Rogers, Will Knight

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  • Google Search Ranks AI Spam Above Original Reporting in News Results

    Google Search Ranks AI Spam Above Original Reporting in News Results

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    For example, I searched “competing visions google openai” and saw a TechCrunch piece at the top of Google News. Below it were articles from The Atlantic and Bloomberg comparing the rival companies’ approaches to AI development. But then, the fourth article to appear for that search, nestled right below these more reputable websites, was another Syrus #Blog piece that heavily copied the TechCrunch article in the first position.

    As reported by 404 Media in January, AI-powered articles appeared multiple times for basic queries at the beginning of the year in Google News results. Two months later, Google announced significant changes to its algorithm and new spam policies, as an attempt to improve the search results. And by the end of April, Google shared that the major adjustments to remove unhelpful results from its search engine ranking system were finished. “As of April 19, we’ve completed the rollout of these changes. You’ll now see 45 percent less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results versus the 40 percent improvement we expected across this work,” wrote Elizabeth Tucker, a director of product management at Google, in a blog post.

    Despite the changes, spammy content created with the help of AI remains an ongoing, prevalent issue for Google News.

    “This is a really rampant problem on Google right now, and it’s hard to answer specifically why it’s happening,” says Lily Ray, senior director of search engine optimization at the marketing agency Amsive. “We’ve had some clients say, ‘Hey, they took our article and rehashed it with AI. It looks exactly like what we wrote in our original content but just kind of like a mumbo-jumbo, AI-rewritten version of it.’”

    At first glance, it was clear to me that some of the images for Syrus’ blogs were AI generated based on the illustrations’ droopy eyes and other deformed physical features—telltale signs of AI trying to represent the human body.

    Now, was the text of our article rewritten using AI? I reached out to the person behind the blog to learn more about how they made it and received confirmation via email that an Italian marketing agency created the blog. They claim to have used an AI tool as part of the writing process. “Regarding your concerns about plagiarism, we can assure you that our content creation process involves AI tools that analyze and synthesize information from various sources while always respecting intellectual property,” writes someone using the name Daniele Syrus over email.

    They point to the single hyperlink at the bottom of the lifted article as sufficient attribution. While better than nothing, a link which doesn’t even mention the publication by name is not an adequate defense against plagiarism. The person also claims that the website’s goal is not to receive clicks from Google’s search engine but to test out AI algorithms in multiple languages.

    When approached over email for a response, Google declined to comment about Syrus. “We don’t comment on specific websites, but our updated spam policies prohibit creating low-value, unoriginal content at scale for the purposes of ranking well on Google,” says Meghann Farnsworth, a spokesperson for Google. “We take action on sites globally that don’t follow our policies.” (Farnsworth is a former WIRED employee.)

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    Reece Rogers

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  • Federal agents raid home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

    Federal agents raid home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

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    The federal agents conducted a search of a home owned by Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao early Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

    Abraham Simmons, spokesperson for the department, did not say who the target of the search warrant was and declined to comment further.

    The search of Thao’s home on Maiden Lane also includes officers from the IRS as well as the U.S. Postal Service. Neither agency could be immediately reached for comment.

    Video footage from local news agencies showed agents carrying boxes and bags out of the house.

    The search comes as Thao and Dist. Atty. Pamela Price are facing a recall election this November. The recall campaign is a response to increased crime and budgetary problems that have challenged city leaders.

    Also Thursday, FBI agents searched a house on View Crest Court in the Oakland hills but authorities did not say if the two search warrants were connected.

    Property records show that latter home is connected to Andy Duong, who also owns Cal Waste Solutions, which has been investigated over campaign contributions to Thao and other elected city officials, the Oaklandside reported.

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    Ruben Vives

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  • Learning to Live With Google’s AI Overviews

    Learning to Live With Google’s AI Overviews

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    Google has spent the past year lustily rolling out AI features across its platforms. But with each launch, it is becoming more clear that some of these so-called enhancements should have simmered a little longer. The latest update to stoke equal parts excitement and ridicule is AI Overviews, the new auto-generated summary boxes that appear at the top of some Google search results.

    In theory, AI Overviews are meant to answer questions and neatly summarize key information about people’s search queries, offering links to the sources the summaries were pulled from and making search more immediately useful. In reality, these AI Overviews have been kinda messy. The information the summary confidently displays can be simply, and sometimes comically, wrong. Even when the AI Overview is correct, it typically only offers a slim account of the topic without the added context—or attribution—contained in the web pages it’s pulling from. The resulting criticisms have forced Google to reportedly dial back the number of search queries that trigger AI Overviews, and they are now being seen less frequently than they were at launch.

    This week, we talk with WIRED writers Kate Knibbs and Reece Rogers about the rollout, how Google has been managing it, and what it’s like to watch our journalism get gobbled up by these hungry, hungry infobots.

    Show Notes

    Read Kate’s story about Google trimming the frequency of its AI Overviews. Read Reece’s story about how Google’s AI Overviews copied his original work. Read Lauren’s story about the end of Google Search as we know it.

    Recommendations

    Kate recommends Token Supremacy by Zachary Small. Reece recommends the game Balatro. Lauren recommends the poetry book Technelegy by Sasha Stiles. Mike recommends the book Neu Klang: The Definitive History of Krautrock by Christoph Dallach.

    Kate Knibbs can be found on social media @Knibbs (X) or @extremeknibbs (Threads/IG). Reece Rogers is @reece___rogers. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

    How to Listen

    You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

    If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

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    Michael Calore, Lauren Goode

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  • Google’s AI Overview Search Results Copied My Original Work

    Google’s AI Overview Search Results Copied My Original Work

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    Last week, an AI Overview search result from Google used one of my WIRED articles in an unexpected way that makes me fearful for the future of journalism.

    I was experimenting with AI Overviews, the company’s new generative AI feature designed to answer online queries. I asked it multiple questions about topics I’ve recently covered, so I wasn’t shocked to see my article linked, as a footnote, way at the bottom of the box containing the answer to my query. But I was caught off guard by how much the first paragraph of an AI Overview pulled directly from my writing.

    The following screenshot on the left is from an interview I conducted with one of Anthropic’s product developers about tips for using the company’s Claude chatbot. The screenshot on the right is a portion of Google’s AI Overview that answered a question about using Anthropic’s chatbot. Reading the two paragraphs side by side, it feels reminiscent of a classroom cheater who copied an answer from my homework and barely even bothered to switch up the phrasing.

    Reece Rogers via Google

    Without the AI Overviews enabled, my article was often the featured snippet highlighted at the top of Google search results, offering a clear link for curious users to click on when they were looking for advice about using the Claude chatbot. During my initial tests of Google’s new search experience, the featured snippet with the article still appeared for relevant queries, but it was pushed beneath the AI Overview answer that pulled from my reporting and inserted aspects of it into a 10-item bulleted list.

    In email exchanges and a phone call, a Google spokesperson acknowledged that the AI-generated summaries may use portions of writing directly from web pages, but they defended AI Overviews as conspicuously referencing back to the original sources. Well, in my case, the first paragraph of the answer is not directly attributed to me. Instead, my original article was one of six footnotes hyperlinked near the bottom of the result. With source links located so far down, it’s hard to imagine any publisher receiving significant traffic in this situation.

    “AI Overviews will conceptually match information that appears in top web results, including those linked in the overview,” wrote a Google spokesperson in a statement to WIRED. “This information is not a replacement for web content, but designed to help people get a sense of what’s out there and click to learn more.” Looking at the word choice and overall structure of the AI Overview in question, I disagree with Google’s characterization that the result may be just a “conceptual match” of my writing. It goes further. Also, even if Google developers did not intend for this feature to be a replacement of the original work, AI Overviews provide direct answers to questions in a manner that buries attribution and reduces the incentive for users to click through to the source material.

    “We see that links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query,” said the Google spokesperson. No data to support this claim was offered to WIRED, so it’s impossible to independently verify the impact of the AI feature on click-through rates. Also, it’s worth noting that the company compared AI Overview referral traffic to more traditional blue-link traffic from Google, not to articles chosen for a featured snippet, where the rates are likely much higher.

    After I reached out to Google about the AI Overview result that pulled from my work, the experimental AI search result for this query stopped showing up, but Google still attempted to generate an answer above the featured snippet.

    Reece Rogers via Google

    While many AI lawsuits remain unresolved, one legal expert I spoke with who specializes in copyright law was skeptical whether I could win any hypothetical litigation. “I think you would not have a strong case for copyright infringement,” says Janet Fries, an attorney at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath. “Copyright law, generally, is careful not to get in the way of useful things and helpful things.” Her perspective focused on the type of content in this specific example of original work, explaining that it is quite difficult to make a claim about instructional or fact-based writing, like my advice column, versus more creative work, like poetry.

    I’m definitely not the first person to suggest focusing on your intended audience when writing chatbot prompts, so I agree that the fact-based aspect of my writing does complicate the overall situation. It’s hard for me, though, to imagine a world where Google arrives at that exact paragraph about Claude’s chatbot in its AI Overview results without referencing my work first.

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    Reece Rogers

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  • Google’s AI Overviews Will Always Be Broken. That’s How AI Works

    Google’s AI Overviews Will Always Be Broken. That’s How AI Works

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    A week after its algorithms advised people to eat rocks and put glue on pizza, Google admitted Thursday that it needed to make adjustments to its bold new generative AI search feature. The episode highlights the risks of Google’s aggressive drive to commercialize generative AI—and also the treacherous and fundamental limitations of that technology.

    Google’s AI Overviews feature draws on Gemini, a large language model like the one behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to generate written answers to some search queries by summarizing information found online. The current AI boom is built around LLMs’ impressive fluency with text, but the software can also use that facility to put a convincing gloss on untruths or errors. Using the technology to summarize online information promises can make search results easier to digest, but it is hazardous when online sources are contractionary or when people may use the information to make important decisions.

    “You can get a quick snappy prototype now fairly quickly with an LLM, but to actually make it so that it doesn’t tell you to eat rocks takes a lot of work,” says Richard Socher, who made key contributions to AI for language as a researcher and, in late 2021, launched an AI-centric search engine called You.com.

    Socher says wrangling LLMs takes considerable effort because the underlying technology has no real understanding of the world and because the web is riddled with untrustworthy information. “In some cases it is better to actually not just give you an answer, or to show you multiple different viewpoints,” he says.

    Google’s head of search Liz Reid said in the company’s blog post late Thursday that it did extensive testing ahead of launching AI Overviews. But she added that errors like the rock eating and glue pizza examples—in which Google’s algorithms pulled information from a satirical article and jocular Reddit comment, respectively—had prompted additional changes. They include better detection of “nonsensical queries,” Google says, and making the system rely less heavily on user-generated content.

    You.com routinely avoids the kinds of errors displayed by Google’s AI Overviews, Socher says, because his company developed about a dozen tricks to keep LLMs from misbehaving when used for search.

    “We are more accurate because we put a lot of resources into being more accurate,” Socher says. Among other things, You.com uses a custom-built web index designed to help LLMs steer clear of incorrect information. It also selects from multiple different LLMs to answer specific queries, and it uses a citation mechanism that can explain when sources are contradictory. Still, getting AI search right is tricky. WIRED found on Friday that You.com failed to correctly answer a query that has been known to trip up other AI systems, stating that “based on the information available, there are no African nations whose names start with the letter ‘K.’” In previous tests, it had aced the query.

    Google’s generative AI upgrade to its most widely used and lucrative product is part of a tech-industry-wide reboot inspired by OpenAI’s release of the chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022. A couple of months after ChatGPT debuted, Microsoft, a key partner of OpenAI, used its technology to upgrade its also-ran search engine Bing. The upgraded Bing was beset by AI-generated errors and odd behavior, but the company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, said that the move was designed to challenge Google, saying “I want people to know we made them dance.”

    Some experts feel that Google rushed its AI upgrade. “I’m surprised they launched it as it is for as many queries—medical, financial queries—I thought they’d be more careful,” says Barry Schwartz, news editor at Search Engine Land, a publication that tracks the search industry. The company should have better anticipated that some people would intentionally try to trip up AI Overviews, he adds. “Google has to be smart about that,” Schwartz says, especially when they’re showing the results as default on their most valuable product.

    Lily Ray, a search engine optimization consultant, was for a year a beta tester of the prototype that preceded AI Overviews, which Google called Search Generative Experience. She says she was unsurprised to see the errors that appeared last week given how the previous version tended to go awry. “I think it’s virtually impossible for it to always get everything right,” Ray says. “That’s the nature of AI.”

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    Will Knight

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  • Google Admits Its AI Overviews Search Feature Screwed Up

    Google Admits Its AI Overviews Search Feature Screwed Up

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    When bizarre and misleading answers to search queries generated by Google’s new AI Overview feature went viral on social media last week, the company issued statements that generally downplayed the notion the technology had problems. Late Thursday, the company’s head of search, Liz Reid, admitted that the flubs had highlighted areas that needed improvement, writing, “We wanted to explain what happened and the steps we’ve taken.”

    Reid’s post directly referenced two of the most viral, and wildly incorrect, AI Overview results. One saw Google’s algorithms endorse eating rocks because doing so “can be good for you,” and the other suggested using nontoxic glue to thicken pizza sauce.

    Rock eating is not a topic many people were ever writing or asking questions about online, so there aren’t many sources for a search engine to draw on. According to Reid, the AI tool found an article from The Onion, a satirical website, that had been reposted by a software company, and it misinterpreted the information as factual.

    As for Google telling its users to put glue on pizza, Reid effectively attributed the error to a sense of humor failure. “We saw AI Overviews that featured sarcastic or troll-y content from discussion forums,” she wrote. “Forums are often a great source of authentic, first-hand information, but in some cases can lead to less-than-helpful advice, like using glue to get cheese to stick to pizza.”

    It’s probably best not to make any kind of AI-generated dinner menu without carefully reading it through first.

    Reid also suggested that judging the quality of Google’s new take on search based on viral screenshots would be unfair. She claimed the company did extensive testing before its launch and that the company’s data shows people value AI Overviews, including by indicating that people are more likely to stay on a page discovered that way.

    Why the embarassing failures? Reid characterized the mistakes that won attention as the result of an internet-wide audit that wasn’t always well intended. “There’s nothing quite like having millions of people using the feature with many novel searches. We’ve also seen nonsensical new searches, seemingly aimed at producing erroneous results.”

    Google claims some widely distributed screenshots of AI Overviews gone wrong were fake, which seems to be true based on WIRED’s own testing. For example, a user on X posted a screenshot that appeared to be an AI Overview responding to the question “Can a cockroach live in your penis?” with an enthusiastic confirmation from the search engine that this is normal. The post has been viewed over 5 million times. Upon further inspection, though, the format of the screenshot doesn’t align with how AI Overviews are actually presented to users. WIRED was not able to recreate anything close to that result.

    And it’s not just users on social media who were tricked by misleading screenshots of fake AI Overviews. The New York Times issued a correction to its reporting about the feature and clarified that AI Overviews never suggested users should jump off the Golden Gate Bridge if they are experiencing depression—that was just a dark meme on social media. “Others have implied that we returned dangerous results for topics like leaving dogs in cars, smoking while pregnant, and depression,” Reid wrote Thursday. “Those AI Overviews never appeared.”

    Yet Reid’s post also makes clear that not all was right with the original form of Google’s big new search upgrade. The company made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to AI Overviews, she wrote.

    Only four are described: better detection of “nonsensical queries” not worthy of an AI Overview; making the feature rely less heavily on user-generated content from sites like Reddit; offering AI Overviews less often in situations users haven’t found them helpful; and strengthening the guardrails that disable AI summaries on important topics such as health.

    There was no mention in Reid’s blog post of significantly rolling back the AI summaries. Google says it will continue to monitor feedback from users and adjust the features as needed.

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    Reece Rogers

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  • Google Taps AI to Show Shoppers How Clothes Fit Different Bodies

    Google Taps AI to Show Shoppers How Clothes Fit Different Bodies

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    One of the new ad formats Google announced today will allow brands to link short-form videos they made—or ones they hired creators to film—to their advertisements in Google’s search engine. AI-generated text summaries of the clips will be included below. “I’ve got three Gen Z-ers at home, and watching them shop, it’s very video-based,” said Madrigal.

    Google also launched a tool that allows companies to create entirely new, AI-generated product images based on photos from earlier marketing campaigns and pictures that represent their brand identity. For example, a home goods brand could upload a picture of one of its candles and an image of a beach, then ask Google to “put the candle on a beach that looks like this one under some palm trees.”

    Shannon Smyth, the founder of a perfume and body-care company called A Girl’s Gotta Spa, said she began using Google’s AI image tools last year when the company first began rolling them out as part of software called Product Studio. Initially, Google only allowed merchants to swap the backgrounds on existing product photos and make small tweaks, like increasing the resolution.

    “It coincided with struggling to keep up on our social channels with professional-looking photography, and as finances became more strapped I decided to give it a try,” Smyth says. She uses it to generate images for use on social media, in an email newsletter, and on her Amazon store. (Google put Smyth in touch with WIRED to discuss her experiences with its AI products.)

    Smyth said Google’s AI tools save time and have gotten better as she has continued using them. “I admit, I was frustrated at first if it would generate images without shadows or reflections, or have an unidentifiable object in the photo,” she explained. “I’ve found that as I give feedback on every image, those issues begin to get resolved.”

    Google is trying to help advertisers create compelling imagery without needing to spend as much of their time and budget on graphic designers, photographers, set designers, and models. That may not be good news for those workers, and if the product images aren’t accurate, shoppers could be left disappointed. But Google hopes AI imagery will make ads more engaging and draw more clicks—boosting its revenue.

    Yet the company and its competitors may also be simply helping retailers avoid paying for expensive software like Photoshop or spending so much on creative services. It’s not clear how many customers will necessarily feel compelled to advertise more. Smyth said her company doesn’t purchase ads on Google, despite how much she appreciates Product Studio.

    AI-generated advertising is increasingly becoming a fixture of the internet. Earlier this month, Meta began giving advertisers on Facebook and Instagram the ability to generate new versions of existing product photos using AI, after previously offering just AI-generated backgrounds. Meta and Google also allow advertisers to generate marketing copy for their ads.

    Amazon announced a similar beta image-generation tool last fall that can also create backgrounds for product photos. Instead of advertising a garden hose against a plain white backdrop, it allows brands to create, say, a scene of a backyard with a garden and trees—no actual dirt required.

    The looming question is whether consumers will find AI-generated ads off-putting, if they notice them in the first place. Some fashion brands, including Levi’s and the dressmaker Selkie, have faced backlash from customers after they announced they were experimenting with artificial intelligence. But for many smaller ecommerce companies, the potential benefits of using AI may outweigh the risks.

    “Let’s face it, small businesses are crumbling like a house of cards. We’re barely hanging on,” said Smyth. “It has helped me to stay top of mind to customers and potential customers visually. I’m pretty confident my aesthetic would’ve tanked or I would’ve abandoned many social channels without it as an option.”

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    Louise Matsakis

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