Glue on pizza? Google’s AI faces social media mockery

It’s difficult to assess how often false answers are being served to users. The responses are constantly shifting, and on social media, it’s difficult to tell what is real or fake.

Some Google users have created workarounds to avoid the new AI Overview feature altogether. Ernie Smith, a writer and journalist, quickly built a website that reroutes Google searches through its historical “Web” results function, which avoids the AI Overview or other information boxes that prioritize some results over others. Adding “udm=14” to Google search URLs strips the new feature from results. 

Smith told NBC News that his new website has quickly gained traction on social media, surpassing the traffic of his entire decade-old blog in just one day.

“I think people are generally frustrated with the experience of Google right now,” Smith said in a phone interview. “In general, the average person doesn’t feel like they have a lot of agency.” 

A Google spokesperson said the company believes users are deliberately attempting to trip up the technology with uncommon questions. Some deeper dives into why the answers have gone awry suggest that the tool is pulling from surprising sources.

404 Media reported that a Google search query for “cheese not sticking to pizza” pulled an 11-year-old Reddit comment that jokingly suggested mixing Elmer’s Glue into the sauce. Even though Google has now removed the AI suggestion from searches for “cheese not sticking to pizza,” according to an NBC News search, the top result is still the Reddit post, with the comment about Elmer’s Glue highlighted. 

A Google spokesperson wrote that queries like “cheese not sticking to pizza” are not searched very often, and are only being noticed because of the viral posts about wrong answers on social media platforms like X — of which there are many.

The same issue with an old Reddit comment also occurred for a search for “how to rotate text in ms paint,” referring to the Microsoft Paint application. The top Google search result, viewed by NBC News, directs the reader to a sarcastic Reddit comment that says to press the “Flubblegorp” key on your keyboard. This key does not exist. This example was originally posted on social media.

Despite Google’s assertion that the tool is working well for many users, mistakes of the AI Overview are continuing to gain visibility and hype. Some of the answers that have been posted online seem to be fake, indicating that the trend has shifted from authentic errors to a new meme format. Even Grammy Award-winning artist Lil Nas X jumped on it, posting a seemingly fake AI Overview about depression. 

“There seems to be a general vibe of disbelief with what it’s getting wrong,” Smith said. “It seems to reflect a sense of distrust with Google and other players of its type.”