Google search is over

JoBo@feddit.uk to Technology@lemmy.world – 1240 points –
Rod Hilton (@rodhilton@mastodon.social)
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Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

  • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

  • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K." "What about Kenya?" "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

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Same. On my account and when logged out the first result is about Kenya. This is happening because of personalized search.

That's not much of an excuse, if it's meant to be one. Google "personalised" the results by making them worse?

I get Kenya even if I am in an private window and not logged in.

This is happening because of personalized search.

Doubtful, I opened up a privacy tab and typed this and received it as the first, non-paraphrased result.

The paraphrased result was correct, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google is doing onesy, twosy patches when notable examples of it being completely full of AI bullshit arise.