Google’s AI search is so broken it can ‘disregard’ what you’re looking for
Google's AI Overviews feature is experiencing a bizarre bug where searching for terms like 'disregard', 'ignore', or 'skip' causes the AI to treat them as system commands rather than search queries.
Google’s AI Overviews are running into an interesting problem right now. Earlier on Friday, if you searched for the term “disregard,” the AI Overview section would include a response like what you’d see from a more traditional AI chatbot instead of the typical AI summary, as spotted on X. As you can see in the image at the top of this story, I got an AI Overview response that said, “Got it. If you need anything else or have a new question later, just let me know!”
Google’s AI search is so broken it can ‘disregard’ what you’re looking for
With certain terms, AI Overviews are drawing a blank.
With certain terms, AI Overviews are drawing a blank.
As of Friday afternoon, however, Google isn’t showing an AI Overview for the term “disregard” at all — instead, it shows a list of news stories about the issue first. Google hasn’t replied to our requests for comment.
AI Overviews haven’t just been tripping up over the word “disregard.” When searching for “ignore,” Google’s AI Overview section showed the following message to a Verge colleague:
Message received! I’m here and ready to help. What would you like to focus on today? Just let me know if there’s a specific topic, task, or question you’d like to explore.
When they searched “skip,” the AI Overview section said:
It looks like your message was just a test or a typo! Feel free to ask a question, share a prompt, or let me know how I can help you with your tasks today. I’m ready whenever you are!
As of Friday afternoon, Google is still showing me AI Overviews with broken responses when I search for “ignore” and “skip.”
As funny as this all is, it’s almost certainly just some kind of bug — I expect Google will fix it soon enough. Maybe Google Search itself is tired after everything that happened at Google I/O.
Update, May 22nd: Google now isn’t showing AI Overviews for “disregard.”
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Source: The Verge AI
