Bad Google Search AI Overview

Our future AI Overlords have some current challenges.

I was troubleshooting my “cobbler” server (a network installation tool), why the “cobbler sync” command was failing.

So I did what most people do today and I started at Google, searching for cobbler sync troubleshooting.

The response from Google was full-on facepalm worthy. Pay special attention to the note above the video:

This video demonstrates basic troubleshooting steps for sewing machines, which can be adapted for Cobbler sync issues:

Wow…just wow.

But don't discount the AI for long.

On a whim I dropped the image into the VS Code Copilot system and asked it:

What do you think of this Google search and the response the AI Overview provided?

It responded:

This Google search result highlights a major flaw in AI-driven content summarization. The AI Overview incorrectly associates “Cobbler” (a network installation tool) with sewing machines, leading to a completely irrelevant video suggestion. This kind of mismatch shows that AI can struggle with context and technical jargon, especially when terms have multiple meanings. It’s a good example of why human oversight is still crucial for technical troubleshooting and why blindly trusting AI-generated answers can be misleading.

Big respect to the designers of the VS Code Copilot system for it being able to understand the context of the Google AI Overview response and explaining it, throwing in a bit of modesty ("human oversight is still crucial") even if it is playing toward my humanity.