In a slightly funny twist, it’s been highlighted that Google’s AI Overviews currently break when you use words such as “disregard.”
AI Overviews are designed to summarize results in Google Search, but like most AI tools, it can be tripped up. There are infamous examples of AI Overview getting things wrong, including some viral mistakes when it first launched such as telling people to put glue on pizza or saying that “blinker fluid” is a real thing. While AI Overviews can be useful, it’s a pretty big problem when they get things wrong.
The latest example of this is that, for some words, AI Overviews break the frequently-used ability to get a dictionary defition in Google Search.
This was highlighted in posts on Twitter/X, where searching for the word “disregard” leaves the AI Overview saying things like it will “disregard the previous prompt,” as if you’re telling the AI to do something instead of just searching for something on Google. We found this also happens with “ignore” and “dismiss,” presumably among others.
Prior to the introduction of AI Overviews, a simple dictionary definition would appear when searching for individual words, either as a “dictionary box” provided by Google, or a Featured Snippet from websites like the online Merriam-Webster dictionary. But, particularly as of late, it seems AI Overviews have completely taken over this role.
Also a problem here is that adding the word “definition” to these words doesn’t always work, with the AI Overview just spitting out another prompt reply that doesn’t provide the word’s definition.
Obviously, this isn’t a problem everyone is going to run into frequently. While the dictionary function is very widely used in Google Search – for many, it’s probably a habit – it’s not quite as likely that users will run into words that trigger such a response. That said, it shows yet another shortcoming of handing over Google Search functions to AI.
We’ll update this article if Google provides any further detail on what’s going on here, but it seems like a relatively straightforward mistake that will likely be patched going forward.
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Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.
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