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Google Serves AI Slop as Top Result for One of the Most Famous Paintings in History (www.404media.co)

submitted 2 months ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The first thing people saw when they searched Google for the artist Hieronymus Bosch was an AI-generated version of his Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most famous paintings in art history.

Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of links they usually see in results. As first spotted by a user on Twitter, when people searched for “Hieronymus Bosch” on Google, it included a couple of images from the real painting, but the first and largest image they saw was an AI-generated version of it.

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[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 133 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Regardless of how the image was generated, why is Google treating a random blogspam site as the authoritative version of a work of art over (say) Wikipedia?

According to the article:

As 404 Media has reported in January, Google is regularly surfacing AI-generated websites that game search engine optimization before the human-made websites they are trained on. “Our focus when ranking content is on the quality of the content, rather than how it was produced,” Google told 404 Media in a statement at the time.

Does that mean I can search for any famous image, take the largest existing version, upscale it by 1% and post it on my own site, and instantly be featured at the top of google searches?

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 96 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because Wikipedia doesn't serve ads or pay Google, so Google doesn't like to make them the top result for a lot of searches they should be.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 months ago

So, yes you can get to the top of image searches that way, but you also have to add google ads to your page so that google can get a second hit of revenue it drives users to your page, serves the ad, and changes the advertiser.

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 57 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's because this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhakar_Raghavan thinks that keeping people engaged on google search longer is what it is all about. Not finding what you search for, no, engagement with your search tool.

"He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012 — a tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, and effectively saw the company bow out of the search market altogether. His responsibilities? Research and development for Yahoo's search and ads products.

When Raghavan joined the company, Yahoo held a 30.4 percent market share — not far from Google’s 36.9%, and miles ahead of the 15.7% of MSN Search. By May 2012, Yahoo was down to just 13.4 percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, and was being beaten even by the newly-released Bing. That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its corporate history, shedding nearly 2,000 employees — or 14% of its overall workforce. " - https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

[–] kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago

Love the name and shame. Everyone needs to know about this guy

[–] elooto@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago

As a Yahoo! employee at that time, this is simply not true. The links don’t provide any info on how he wrecked Yahoo! Search. It sounds like someone is trying to pin Google’s search downfall on him, and made a wild assumption about Yahoo!.