We'll admit that “how much glue do you add to pizza” is an unusual query, but given the recent furor over glue pizza, it's not all that unusual. As Bluesky's Colin McMillen pointed out, if you ask Google how much glue to add to pizza, you won't get the correct answer (don't add anything!). Instead, you'll get a response that says our own Katie suggests adding 1/8 cup. Oops!
You might be wondering if this is a fake screenshot. I thought so too. But… The Verge I checked by running my own query:
This is really cool, folks. When people like me report something that Google's AI has done wrong, we train the AI to even worse.
We, um, A certain age You may remember the phenomenon of “Google bombing.” A classic example was the use of the words “miserable failure” in a link to George W. Bush. When done frequently, a Google search for “miserable failure” would return George W. Bush as a result. Google found a way to kill this fun game at some point in the late 2000s, but new AI results have brought the game back. For a nostalgic rendition, write “miserable failure” in the same sentence as George W. Bush again, and you'll probably see some cool new AI search results in a day or two. You never know.
This isn't a universal problem, by the way. I asked Perplexity.AI how much glue should be on pizza, and it replied, “We definitely don't recommend putting glue on pizza. Glue is not an edible material and can be toxic and harmful to your health if ingested,” and explained how the “glue on pizza” meme was born.
ChatGPT also doesn't recommend putting glue on pizza.
Of course, this isn't the only mistake, but it's probably the most amusing. But here's another one that's pretty good: Google can't answer questions about its own products anymore, thanks to its AI. Verge editor Richard Lawler asked how to turn on screenshots in Chrome's incognito mode. Google's AI gave two answers, both of which were wrong. One was to suggest taking a screenshot in a regular Chrome tab.
Meanwhile, Google's AI claims that it's impossible to take screenshots in Chrome's incognito mode.
Unfortunately, I'm convinced that by explaining the problem, I'm now making it worse. Google will sip my excellent writing explaining the problem and feed it back to careless people as proof that Chrome incognito screenshots are impossible and that glue should be used for pizza. What will mischievous bloggers do with this information?
