Amazon and Google’s AIs fell into the trap of calling Mein Kampf «a true work of art».
For those who thought that artificial intelligence was already smart enough to avoid falling for the obvious «hooks», here’s a new example. Users noticed that Google showed positive Mein Kampf reviews when searching, namely those generated by Amazon.
The problem is that the AI tried to summarize general reader reviews, so it completely lost context. The reviews mostly talked about the quality of the printing, ease of reading, or historical significance of the book — not its ideological content. Since AI doesn’t understand nuances, it gave a general result: «work of art».
«Customers find the book easy to read and interesting. They appreciate the insightful and intelligent rants. The print looks nice and is plain. Readers describe the book as a true work of art. However, some find the content boring and grim. Opinions vary on the suspenseful content, historical accuracy, and value for money», — writes Amazon’s AI based on 2067 reviews.
Google made the situation even more interesting when it added this fragment to its AI Overviews feature (which is designed to quickly provide «useful» answers to queries). As a result, Google literally advertised Mein Kampf as a book with «clever sayings».
Most likely, Amazon’s AI took phrases out of context in the reviews. This gave the user an empty review typical for AI, in which «poured a lot of water on». If a person had read the reviews separately, they would have realized that the reviewer did not necessarily support the book’s ideas. But AI collected all of this and summarized it in the style of «brilliant reading».
When journalists contacted Google for comment, the company quickly turned off AI feedback for this search. Amazon has not commented on the situation. The case is a good reminder that AI does not understand the context and can give openly ambiguous answers. Artificial intelligence cannot replace critical thinking, so it is pointless to trust any of its answers.
In 2020, Amazon also banned the book from its platforms for a while, but then put it back on sale. At the same time, sales are made without explaining the context, and this gives room for strange situations with reviews.
The Mein Kampf example was not the first «puncture» Google AI Overviews. Previously, the feature advised people to eat glue, swallow a stone a day, and use sex toys to calm children. Also recently Google launches «false» earthquake alerts in a region where they are almost non-existent. Also Gemini was displaying incorrect images of historical figures and groups through a diversity policy. A similar problem was faced by Apple Intelligence, which published critically inaccurate news
Source: 404 Media
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