ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
You may have noticed recently that when you ask Google Search a question, many times the first thing that pops up is a big box at the top of the feed with an answer written by AI. Well, sometimes that information is not correct, and NPR tech reporter Dara Kerr reports some people wish they could opt out.
DARA KERR, BYLINE: It's easy to find people fed up with the AI in Google Search.
SAMANTHA YE: As soon as I saw the Google AI results popping up, I was looking for ways to get rid of it.
HEATHER USSERY-KNIGHT: It just doesn't seem ready.
DANIEL KEPPLE: Basically forcing this down our throats, regardless of whether people like it or whether it's useful or not.
KERR: That's Samantha Ye, Heather Ussery-Knight and Daniel Kepple. Google introduced its AI tool last May. It's called AI Overview. It doesn't pop up for every search, but people say it's still frustrating. The No.1 problem? There's no way to opt out. Here's Kepple again.
KEPPLE: You can't trust it fundamentally.
KERR: Trustworthiness has been an issue with AI Overview. When Google first launched the tool, it immediately started spouting falsehoods and just weird ideas. It told people eating a rock a day was healthy and that adding glue to pizza would stop the cheese from sliding off. Heather Ussery-Knight describes herself as a technophile, but she doesn't like this technology.
USSERY-KNIGHT: If you are going to have this technology be prevalent, it needs to be accurate, especially right now, when we've got sort of this whole, like, alternative facts things going on.
KERR: The promise of AI is that it's able to ingest all of this data and pop out what is supposed to be a useful summary very quickly. The whole process takes a ton of energy, which is also a problem for people. A search with generative AI uses about 10 times the amount of energy as a typical web search. Isabelle Laun is a recent college graduate in Oregon.
ISABELLE LAUN: I really don't want to be increasing my carbon footprint by so much just by searching.
KERR: AI Overview can also lead to unintended consequences. Take Jennifer Hamilton. She's a family medicine doctor in Philadelphia. She says the tool is messing up the online tests that doctors like her have to take regularly. They're allowed to use the internet during these tests, but not AI because they're supposed to come up with their own answers.
JENNIFER HAMILTON: But if you're using AI, you can just copy and paste the question and get an answer without doing any thinking at all.
KERR: Other smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo also have AI, but they have an opt-out option. A Google spokesman told NPR that people find the Google AI tool helpful. He didn't answer questions about why there's no opt-out, but he said the links are still there. Patrick Hall is a teaching assistant professor at George Washington University.
PATRICK HALL: Enabling users to opt out is just a simple best practice.
KERR: Hall studies data ethics and says Google probably doesn't offer an opt-out because AI Overview is good for business. It keeps people looking at Google instead of clicking away on a search result.
HALL: It's about getting more eyes on their pages. It's about keeping the hype going around generative AI. And I think we, as consumers, are really just kind of fodder in this huge market coming to life.
KERR: Some people have found workarounds. There are third-party browser extensions, including one called Bye Bye, Google AI, and some people are just switching to other search engines. This is what Jennifer Hamilton, the doctor, really wants.
HAMILTON: I want a button where I can say, turn it off and leave it off.
KERR: Or maybe an on button that she'd never hit. Dara Kerr, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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