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Comment by satvikpendem

13 hours ago

Google already has AI overviews which I use instead of polluting my ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini chats.

The unwanted effect of AI overviews, in my experience, is turning their users into very-confidently-wrong arguers of everything.

The upside is that telling said users to double-check the sources usually results in them realizing the AI overview was wrong, but it's still a waste of everyone's time.

The 2021-era of of just "Not finding the results" was maybe a better outcome.

  • The difference is today it's mostly correct. I don't see hallucinations like a few years ago with AI generally, they know to use grounded search.

    • I get hallucinations every day, including ones where Google is mixing up three different similarly named products, or is telling me that I can mix two cleaning products (which would create chlorine gas). Tested today (2026-08-08).

      Or a search for precise image downscaling in krita (on 2026-08-03) had the following Google AI result:

      > To scale down an image in Krita by an exact integer factor with precise pixel sampling, use Scale Image to New Size or the Transform Tool, set your filter to Box, and input exact integer-divided values.

      With the source https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php%3Ff=274&t=135270.html

      Except that that forum thread has the following posts:

      > just use the "box" filter when scaling

      Followed by

      > There is no box filter.

      Which is correct, as Krita does not have a box filter for scaling images.

      It took two further rounds of back and forth for Google's AI (where it suggested nearest neighbor) to finish with

      > You are entirely correct: Krita does not feature a true Box filter, and using Nearest Neighbor to downscale a complex image introduces heavy aliasing, skipped rows, and jagged artifacts.

      This could've been avoided if the AI actually checked against the source code and documentation for krita, and checked the ingredients of the cleaning products in the other case together with basic principles of chemistry.

      There's this saying:

      > If one person says it's raining and another says it's sunny, a journalist is supposed to go out and look at the weather.

      I don't need an automated way to summarize random half-truths from forum posts online. If AI is supposed to bring any benefit, it should be finding out the actual truth about the question being asked, not just report whatever opinions are being voiced online.

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