Comment by lars_von_pidor
6 hours ago
The only reason Google is pushing this AI crap is so that they can shove ads right into people's throats without them being able to use ad blockers (it's easy to block a web script but virtually impossible to block the text itself), effectively doubling their profits overnight.
Block the AI overviews with extensions like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-over... or use a userscript to do the same.
Alternatively, just change your browser's default search shortcut, and add &udm=14 to the end of the normal google search. It changes the default search results to "web" rather than "All", which removes all the extraneous crap they've added over the years.
Compare https://www.google.com/search?q=test to https://www.google.com/search?q=test&udm=14
The wild thing is how much faster it is to load. I'd almost forgotten how fast Google's default search used to be. Thank you!
You can block the entire AI response, but not the paid-for product placement in the response separately.
Block the entire AI response. It's not a good thing. It tells you whatever google wants you to see. It's an incredibly powerful brainwashing tool.
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The blog post says ‘These formats will also continue to be clearly labeled as “Sponsored.”’. We will probably be able to block them about as well as we can block sponsored search results.
Could also just block the element in ublock?
Semi-seriously: I imagine we'll live to see the day when we run an adblocker that runs a small model to semantically filter out ads in Google search results
You won't be able to tell if it's an ad, if it's just biased (and the ad is not discolsed).
They could always sell ads like "recommend my tool more when user asks for cupcakes in London".
And then, the output would be: "My top 3 recomendations are X, Y, Z".
And maybe only X is the one that paid and Y and Z are organic.
"Cupcakes in London" is not a good example since it's directly asking for advertising. Ads in more information-oriented prompts would be much easier to spot, for example looking for out of context brands and products.
That's almost certainly illegal in many jurisdictions, and they'd definitely not be able to hide that they're doing it indefinitely. A sure way to be massively sued.
Sounds like a good fit for a small, on-device model. Can Chrome extensions use the new Prompt API, which has caused a stir because Google pushed it through against opposition of virtually everyone else? (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api) Would be hilarious.
Entirely accurate, but what an absolute waste of resources across the board.
Fighting AI with AI?
What a wild future.
In the US at least, I believe the FTC requires ads to be clear and conspicuous when those ads are designed to otherwise blend into the general editorial style. I could see AI being regulated as influencer marketing, but hopefully with more enforcement.
There's no way EU would let Google display ads without clearly marking them as such. So any ad blocker should be able to continue detect the block or link that's an ad.
> but virtually impossible to block the text itself
Why do you believe so?
As long as there is a clear indication somewhere on the webpage (in the metadata or in the text itself) that a specific portion of a text is an ad, a browser extension will be able to block it.
And I assume that there are laws mandating that the ads must be clearly marked in order to be distinguishable from the genuine content.
The law will not be updated or enforced. Laws don't reflect justice, they reflect the power relations in the society at the time the law was written.
Big tech is paying handsomely for this, and I don't think the populace is going to outbribe them.
That's only doable if the ads are artificially injected. But what if they are part of the training, system prompt or the search results that are fed to the AI? What if Google Search bumps up their paying advertiser up in the internal search results for Gemini (as they are basically already doing)? The AI will be biased towards the advertisers without literally embedding an ad into the output text.
> what if they are part of the training
No way Google is going to bake the ads into training data. Their entire business is built on auctioning off each ad slot in realtime.
> if they are part of the training
That would be an intentional poisoning of the models with biased or outright untruthful data.
I believe that many people would be unwilling to use such models.
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It's just gonna say "this whole thing might be a big ad" and they will fight the fines in court for years, lose and book those fines as cost of doing business while laughing all the way to the bank
This might come as a surprise to many, but the sole reason Google exist is to make a profit. More profit means more success means more profit, that's why they did create a company in the first place. Mindblowing stuff, that.
Another massive reason is that ChatGPT and similar apps are eating their lunch. Asking a question to ChatGPT actually tends to be pretty convenient compared to the top X results that are just SEO optimized slop.
Competitors will be very happy though.