AI Overviews hallucinates that Airbus, not Boeing, involved in fatal Air India crash

In this search, Google’s AI says the crash involved an Airbus A330 instead of a Boeing 787.

Credit:
/u/stuckintrraffic

But why is Google bringing up the Air India crash at all in the context of Airbus? Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict if you’ll get an AI Overview that blames Boeing or Airbus—generative AI is non-deterministic, meaning the output is different every time, even for identical inputs. Our best guess for the underlying cause is that numerous articles on the Air India crash mention Airbus as Boeing’s main competitor. AI Overviews is essentially summarizing these results, and the AI goes down the wrong path because it lacks the ability to understand what is true.

Google isn’t hiding that its generative AI tools can make mistakes—there’s a disclaimer at the bottom of every AI Overview that notes “AI answers may include mistakes.” Virtually every AI product has a similar line, but it’s not very prominent, and users may simply gloss over that when talking to a robot that seems very confident in its wrongness. Perhaps these warnings aren’t sufficient when hallucinations remain so common.

In this case, the AI Overview error could rile up Airbus, which probably doesn’t want to be mentioned at all in this context. Meanwhile, it could give a little cover to Boeing, which has suffered its fair share of reputational damage from recent issues with its aircraft.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update with any statement we receive.