Uh...are search engines (specifically Google) replacing blurbs with AI now, too?
Like, I just looked up when Arthurian legends started to be written, and a blurb under this result -- Guide to the Classics: the Arthurian Legend -- is:
"The 'Arthurian Legend' really kicked off in the early 12th century, until about the 7th century."
Now that doesn't make much sense, does it? So I clicked and actually read the article, and there isn't a single sentence that says such a thing. But there is a piece that I think the AI must have scraped from to generate a blurb:
"The 'Arthurian Legend' really kicked off in the early 12th century, with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (1138), which purported to describe the entire history of Britain from the day dot until about the 7th century."
That makes a lot more sense. But why is Google doing this? I tried searching up a few more things and yep, a lot of the blurbs are very clearly AI-generated...and blatantly wrong. To be clear, these are not generated by the site owners themselves. It seems to just be a Google thing.
Bottom line: fuck Google, fuck generative AI, and I'm never using my work laptop for silly little history research again, because I can only use Google on there. And you should probably do the same thing.
