Death by AI

A popular local spot has a summary on google maps that says:

Vibrant watering hole with drinks & po' boys, as well as a jukebox, pool & electronic darts.

It doesn't serve po' boys, have a jukebox (though the playlists are impeccable), have pool, or have electronic darts. (It also doesn't really have drinks in the way this implies. It's got beer and a few canned options. No cocktails or mixed drinks.)

They got a catty one-star review a month ago for having a misleading description by someone who really wanted to play pool or darts.

I'm sure the owner reported it. I reported it. I imagine other visitors have as well. At least a month on, it's still there.

Can one sue for damages? Is it worth getting delisted?

I am so frikkin tired of trying to help people online who post a screenshot "from Google"(which is obviously just the AI summary) that says feature X should exist even with detailed description of how it works when in reality feature X never existed.

This happens all the time on automotive forums/FB groups and it's a huge problem.

Obvious solution: start serving po' boys and buy a jukebox/pool/electronic darts.

And people are actually making decisions (and leaving bad reviews) based on this junk data

And an ASCII tab reader, of course!

So if i write a fake glowing review i can now steer a companies offerings with that. The power..

I have seen people unironically advocate for that on Hacker News.

Good businesses appreciate customer feedback delivered in more obvious ways as well.

AI Overviews are a good idea but the tech still needs to mature a lot more before we can give it to common folk. I'm shocked at how fast is has been rolled out just to "be first". Somehow, the AI Overviews also use Google's worst model.

There is no indication that their actual customers want that and that it would benefit the business and their customers long term. It might as well be a bad location for the above for some reason.

It's an outdoor seating counter serve kind of place, so yeah :)

Great. That's how it always starts when we 'listen' to the AI. First, we make a few adjustments to the menu. Next, we get told there's a dancing floor, and now we have to install that. A few steps later? Automated factory for killer robots (with a jukebox).

I should probably admire the AI for showing a lot of restraint on its first steps to global domination and/or wiping out humanity.

Expectations vs Reality, life's favorite joke

The best thing about the AI overviews is it chooses better sources than you get from the search results, IE Google knows what websites are actually more informative and doesn't want to put them in the actual search results.