Internet of Pieces Google’s AI search wants you to change your car’s “blinker fluid.” No, dear reader: blinker fluid does not exist. Last week, at its yearly I/O conference, Google doubled down on its AI-powered vision for the future of search — a vision that, as it stands, basically involves embedding an AI-paraphrased regurgitation of search results at the top of a user’s results page. “Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need,” the company’s Head of Search Liz Reid wrote in an I/O-accompanying blog post. “Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews.” But Google’s AI Overviews, previously known as Search Generative Experience, are still far from reliable. Case in point: as one X-formerly-Twitter user pointed out over the weekend, AI Overview will respond to the search entry “blinker not making sound” — which would ideally return helpful, expert-penned posts or videos that help googlers figure out why their car’s blinker isn’t working — with the advice to “replace the blinker fluid.” Which, again, is not a real thing. When we tested the search query for ourselves, we got the same terrible advice. An actual search I made pic.twitter.com/6z2t4Jps37 — Iroquois Pliskin (@DaltonEverett_) May 19, 2024 Blunder Road The blinker fluid advice is one of many instances of AI Overview failing to provide correct information, often due to terrible sourcing. To wit: recently, Redditors prompting the feature with the search “food names end with um” noticed…Google’s Search AI Recommends Changing Your Car’s Blinker Fluid, Which Is a Made Up Thing That Does Not Exist