However, there are a couple of reasons why that won’t work.
However, the feature that stole the show was AI Overviews.
It will pull the most important information from the top Google results and give you a neat summary.
Every time Google improves its algorithms, these spammers find new ways to exploit them.
However, in late 2022, something changed that shifted the balance of power.
This might also explain why the ever-present sentiment that “Google is dying” has intensified in recent months.
Google hopes AI Search will be the fix for this, but there are some issues with that plan.
It turns out, the answer was: not very much.
But it didn’t end there.
Shortly after AI overviews started rolling out, people noticed thatsome of its answers were ridiculousor even harmful.
For example, it suggested using gasoline to make spaghetti and drinking at least 2 liters of urine daily.
Heres the thing: AI hallucinations in Search bring up a trust problem.
It’s one thing for a new experimental AI chatbot to occasionally lie to you and fabricate information.
It’s a whole other ball game when Google does it because people trust Google.
Some experts even believe that hallucinations cant be fixed and are a fundamental part of LLMs.
It also consults the top web pages on Google.
We already saw this play out in the viral How to prevent cheese from sliding off pizza?
query where the AI suggested adding glue to the pizza.
Another example is the AI’s recommendation to eat at least one small rock daily.
These are obvious blunders, and easy to brush off as harmless.
But what happens the next time AI Overviews subtly misinterprets something important thats not so easy to spot?
AI Overviews May Kill the Open Internet
AI Overviews threaten the entire business structure of the internet.
Websites rely on ad revenue to make a profit, and this ad revenue is dependent on traffic.
Therefore, websites have an incentive to make great content that keeps people visiting the site.
AI Overviews throw a wrench in this structure when they pull information directly from websites.
The natural progression may be that websites are forced to lock their content behind paywalls to stay in business.
It also seems unlikely considering that these links are buried at the very bottom of the AI Overview results.
Even if it’s true for lower-ranked pages, it’s hard to believe about top results.
If content gets locked behind paywalls to survive, what happens to the internet?
The problem, however, is that they fundamentally misunderstand what people want from Search: authenticity.
People are tired of generic content.
They want real human experiences and not just regurgitated advice.
