A satirical video by American gymnast Ian Gunther about “John Backflip” inadvertently revealed some design flaws within the search summaries generated by Google’s AI.
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Six months after Google’s Gemini AI model suggested using glue as an ingredient in pizza, the feature continues to be struggling to separate fact from fiction.
Search “Who Invented the Backflip?” and up until a couple of weeks ago Gemini was telling you all about John Backflip, who apparently first mastered the move in 1316 in medieval Europe. And for those who search “Who is John Backflip,” then Google AI credits him with inventing the gymnastic skill. But the source for this information is a TikTok video by American gymnast Ian Gunther, who completely invented the story.
“I like to make satirical videos about gymnastics, and you can also indulge in nonsense and a few jokes about the sport,” he said Forbes.
Google’s Gemini AI, which creates an “overview” that has been embedded at the highest of search results for six months, got off to a rocky start. The AI review’s claim that eating rocks is the case dietary advantages And Barack Obama was the primary Muslim president of the United States, who did greater than just make the corporate a goal Online jokes but became one parole for the restrictions of enormous language models.
Gunther, who was formerly on Team USA and won the 2023 NCAA Championship, got here up with the backstory for John Backflip after a training session at his Bay Area gym in May 2023. “Most skills in gymnastics are named after the first person to achieve “I will compete internationally,” Guenther said. “I went home and made up a silly backstory for someone who invented the backflip.”
In case anyone missed this JokeGunter also names “Henry MuscleUp”, “Richard Presshandstand” and “Alfonso El Grip” as other early gymnastics pioneers. The video was a modest success for Gunther YouTube and TikTok, where he posts clips from training sessions and competitions, but he had mostly forgotten concerning the clip until he received a text message in July. “It was a screenshot of the AI and I believed, ‘Oh no, what have I done?’ Am I the spreader of disinformation?”
Screenshots of the AI summary via John Backflip were shared on Reddit and other social networks and even received a corrective tweet from the dictionary publisher Merriam Webster.
Google’s AI overview searches for the inventor of the backflip now determine that it’s a web meme, but still parrot Gunther’s video verbatim in searches for John Backflip. When Forbes After testing competing AI platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, they either saw the joke too or discovered that there isn’t a exact source for the primary person to perform a backflip.
Günther continues to be puzzling why Google picked up the video. “You probably shouldn’t use my videos as a source,” he said.
The video appears to have exploited several vulnerabilities within the design of Google AI Overviews. According to a May Blog post Strange results like this come from Google Vice President Liz Reid “Data gaps” where there’s some good content in a search or where the one content is satirical, she explained.
“In a few cases, we saw AI overviews misinterpret language on web pages and present inaccurate information. We worked quickly to address these issues, either through improvements to our algorithms or through established processes to remove responses that do not meet our guidelines,” Reid said within the blog post.
Reid said that Google has implemented safeguards around AI overviews to detect nonsensical queries and curb the usage of each humorous content and user-generated advice, particularly on news and health topics. Google also added the warning “Generative AI is experimental” after publishing the AI summaries.
Google spokeswoman Olivia O’Brien said Forbes in a press release: “The vast majority of AI overviews are high quality and their accuracy rate is on par with other search features like featured snippets.”
Gunther is competing again in a gymnastics competition in Prague, Czech Republic and said he can be pleased to see his joke continue to exist in AI-powered infamy. “I hope one day they teach John Backflip in schools,” Gunther joked.
