• Teppa@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Maybe it could actually fix microslops crappy online documentation library, thats pro customer.

      Relink all the broken links, fix outdated information from patches where they never bothered updating it.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      My wife works at a library. People constantly come in asking to use the library fax machine, because Google’s AI says they have one.

      They don’t have one. Their website says they don’t have one. But LLMs have determined it’s plausible for libraries to have a fax machine, so Google tells people that they have one.

      You’d be surprised at the number of people who can’t accept that people working at the library know more about the library than Google.

      • BozeKnoflook@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I’ve had this experience myself; I’m an American living in the Netherlands and sometimes just don’t know the name for the thing I need nor where to buy one. LLM bots are fine for the translation part, but they will make wild assumptions like telling me I can buy a kitchen strainer at the hardware store or food spices at a place called Kruidvat which translates to spice-bucket basically but is actually most like CVS without the pharmacy and does not sell any food besides some candy and chips.

        It’s hilarious how quickly these bots can swing from super useful to actually harmful to trust.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      _Oh wow, I was reading some other websites to summarize this one, and apparently their competitor (who happened to pay for ad placement on this websites name plus url) says this website throws puppies into volcanos!

      Oh, and you need to eat 6 rocks a day for your nutrition.

      Was this summary helpful, or do you also throw puppies into volcanos?_

  • Just inside that door is a Home Alone level of ad boobytraps you have to endure before the shop owner smashes you in the shins with an email newsletter appeal. Only then can you actually shop for a bit before a pop-up ad spider falls on you from the rafters.

    • Taleya@aussie.zone
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      23 hours ago

      “Hi we noticed you’re running an adblocker. You’ll have to turn that off to see our site”

      I call that one the ol’ go fuck yourself.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Yes, but surely Google’s plan long term is to be the one placing those ad booby traps and taking the money from that shopkeep, but obviously not in an evil way, that’d be weird.

    • siravious@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      And when you try to head for the door, it opens a few inches before slamming shut, forcing you to stay in the store. Even looking that direction? Yep, another newsletter pop up.

  • coolfission@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Worst is when is uses phrases like “widely accepted” for questions I ask that are open-ended. Also Gemini completely makes up stuff when it comes to configuring settings in DAW and Davinci Resolve in my experience.

  • slazer2au@lemmy.worldM
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    How about I summarise it? That way you don’t have to deal with a cookie popup, a news letter popup, a signin with google popup, a request to send notifications to your browser popup, a back button that doesnt take you back to your previous page, and ads between every other paragraph.

    • Kaligalis@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      This, and newspaper writing style which endlessly beats around the bush, actually are the reasons for the mainstream accepting AI summaries. AI summaries only work because the Internet is a hellscape of intentionally bad UX with site-owners being hostile towards their users.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Real newspaper writing style doesn’t beat around the bush.

        SEO-optimization writing style does beat around the bush, because they have to try to “organically” mention all the keywords that might bring someone to the page. They also need to make it longer so there are more places to insert ads.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        23 hours ago

        The waffling happens because otherwise google drops their ranking and won’t give them traffic .

        Search engine optimisation is satan’s arsehole and has absolutely wrecked the internet…but it’s only happening because of google.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      How the FUCK are people okay with the sign in with Google pop up?

      If you have any sign up with Google it adds itself to your site. Then it hijacks the user session by showing a large dialogue over your content. No, you can’t disable that, and if you do they might block visitors from finding your site. They might not, but maybe they will.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          I mean for most people it makes sense.

          No one wants to make another account for the hundredth time.

          I always do because I don’t trust Google et AI not to lock me out but the account creation friction of the modern web sucks.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Google doesn’t try to stop you from visiting a website. It tries to answer your query directly, which may mean it’s no longer necessary to visit the website.

    A more realistic scenario is someone asking, “hey, what’s 20 ounces in grams?” Then there’s a “website” that wants to invite you in and tell you all about unit conversion, and show you tables for how many tonnes are in a ton, etc. Meanwhile “Google” just says “566.99”. It started doing that sort of thing back in 2012, long before the AI boom started. Many of those info cards (like unit conversions) don’t use LLMs and are actually really handy.

    Having said that, yeah, it’s devastating to websites that were free to use and ad supported and depended on traffic to survive. And, because humans are thrifty, websites that weren’t free to use mostly disappeared a long time ago. I don’t know what the solution is. But, I don’t think it’s “prevent Google from answering your question if it is capable of doing so”.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Google actually just patented a system where an algorithm decides that your web page is boring and generates a new one on the fly.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      In your example, many browsers will do simple math or conversions in the address bar without AI, and google gave that same answer prior to AI with a simple conversion menu box that showed up as you said. It still does sometimes depending on the question.

      More realistically it would be “How long is a Boeing 747?” Now an AI will give you a length range and offer that there are different 747 models manufactured in different years, etc.

      So instead of clicking on an ad-supported “aviation info” site like you say, odds are the asker will just take the provided summary and not proceed any further, or refine the question to a specific model that again an AI will probably answer, even possibly ironically scraping the content from the very same “aviation info” site that would have received your click 5 years ago, but now google gets the view and the site doesn’t.

    • Taleya@aussie.zone
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      23 hours ago

      The websites only obscure the answer because google would run the query and present the answer in the summary without giving them a click through.

      Content theft has been going on much much longer than you realise.

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
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    I genuinely don’t think Google wants to do this. I think they’re doing it because they’re forced to by the other LLM competitors and are looking for competitive edges.

    I think they would prefer to route you to those websites where they can sell you ads.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      You’re not thinking that far ahead. Eventually the AI summary will have embedded ads.

      “That’s a nice website but why don’t you try this one over here…”

          • Taleya@aussie.zone
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            23 hours ago

            hisses

            Sorry. Very long time pulp fan, do not get me started on that fucking thing…

            Check out the black mirror ep. Depressing and brutal as hell though.

      • lobut@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        lol, yeah how could I have forgotten the Claude ads already, good point

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      The problem is it often just chats bollocks that it found on reddit. Sometimes I’ll see it talk about stuff I already know because im looking for something super specific and see it giving out false information.

      If its something I don’t know at all, I’ll have no way of knowing if its true or not without going to the source myself, at that point why bother reading it at all?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      Easy to forget that pre-AI Google was so full of link bombs and SEO-tuned crap that the front page was largely bullshit click-bait anyway.

      I don’t need a link to EasterDatesLookup.biz to tell me when Easter is in 2026. I don’t need a link to PresidentalHistoriesNotebookExtreme.org to tell me Lincoln’s birthday. I don’t need MedicalWebPlus.md to tell me the symptoms for chickenpox. I don’t fucking need sixteen YouTube videos in TikTok voice to explain it all to me, either.

      I’ll admit at some point 90% of my internet experience is just going to Wikipedia, so maybe my real mistake is going to Google at all. But if Google AI is just reposting text from Wikipedia anyway, that’s fine.

      • Barbecue Cowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Exactly, great for things like recipes too, they’ve created an amazing path to making nearly every SEO strategy worthless. I don’t need to read your grandma’s biography to find out how you make sourdough bread. And usually, when it is wrong it’s very wrong, so if it’s an area you have a base level of knowledge in it’s fairly easy to pick out the inconsistencies.