- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion
- [email protected]
Archive link: https://archive.ph/GtA4Q
The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.
A joke that people made when Google and Reddit announced their data sharing agreement was that Google’s AI would become dumber and/or “poisoned” by scraping various Reddit shitposts and would eventually regurgitate them to the internet. (This is the same joke people made about AI scraping Tumblr). Giving people the verbatim wisdom of Fucksmith as a legitimate answer to a basic cooking question shows that Google’s AI is actually being poisoned by random shit people say on the internet.
Because Google is one of the largest companies on Earth and operates with near impunity and because its stock continues to skyrocket behind the exciting news that AI will continue to be shoved into every aspect of all of its products until morale improves, it is looking like the user experience for the foreseeable future will be one where searches are random mishmashes of Reddit shitposts, actual information, and hallucinations. Sundar Pichai will continue to use his own product and say “this is good.”
Go looking and you’ll find numerous articles, anecdotes, and videos that go into the ways the work with the ingredients.
The important part is that they are not allowed to “misrepresent” the food. Meaning you can’t make it look like you’re getting five pounds of meat when you’re actually only getting one pound.
But there’s nothing stopping them from putting paint on the burger patties to make them look perfectly cooked, or using paper towel and toothpicks inside to hold everything at “the perfect angle” or spraying scotch guard on pancakes to make sure the syrup runs nicer. Because the person watching the ad isn’t getting a “misrepresentation” of the food or ingredients.
It’s a fine line, and people have walked it over and over. The advertisers and food stylists have it down to a science, and because it’s all about the money they go over and above to make sure they walk juuuust inside the line.
I have heard of them slitting the buns and patties in the back so that they can make them look a little bigger in the front.