151–160 of 603 posts
Allowing synthetic content to grow without limits will force the creation of a "synternet," an only-generative content network that can be accessed but will guarantee the classic internet to be human-focused, otherwise, internet data will lose value and the human incentive to surf will be lost
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That's only doable if the ads are artificially injected. But what if they are part of the training, system prompt or the search results that are fed to the AI? What if Google Search bumps up their paying advertiser up in the internal search results for Gemini (as they are basically already doing)? The AI will be biased towards the advertisers without literally embedding an ad into the output text.
> if they are part of the training That would be an intentional poisoning of the models with biased or outright untruthful data. I believe that many people would be unwilling to use such models.
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Let me let you in on a little industry "secret" You can't trust those results no matter what The pages that they pull in to source that data all contain affiliate links and companies contact websites to get their tools to the tops of those lists by paying money often monthly. I know this because I do this... It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily
Simplest way to do is by running affiliate program for your SaaS and shady marketers will do everything to get sales if it's profitable.
They won't get you on any worthwhile list unless it's their own because it's too risky for them and any site they would publish it on would want to use their own affiliate link. Unless of course we are talking about something like Medium or YouTube which does work
And then of course there's the fraudsters who will bid on branded keywords we have banned dozens of people for that
The only reason Google is pushing this AI crap is so that they can shove ads right into people's throats without them being able to use ad blockers (it's easy to block a web script but virtually impossible to block the text itself), effectively doubling their profits overnight.
> but virtually impossible to block the text itself Why do you believe so? As long as there is a clear indication somewhere on the webpage (in the metadata or in the text itself) that a specific portion of a text is an ad, a browser extension will be able to block it. And I assume that there are laws mandating that the ads must be clearly marked in order to be distinguishable from the genuine content.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me let you in on a little industry "secret" You can't trust those results no matter what The pages that they pull in to source that data all contain affiliate links and companies contact websites to get their tools to the tops of those lists by paying money often monthly. I know this because I do this... It's basically standard SEO but it also manipulates AI like ChatGPT very very easily
This is why local AI is so important
And they are trained on web data just like any other model...
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That's the real question and it's not hypothetical. Google already adjusts organic rankings based on advertiser relationships in ways that aren't documented. With AI Mode the surface area for that kind of influence is much larger and much less visible. A search result you can inspect. A synthesized answer you can't.
Don't they already to this with maps routing? I thought this was the norm.
> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?
Since when have we considered ads something helpful? Their purpose isn’t to be helpful. They're there to sell you something, and nothing more. Any semblance of helpfulness is misinterpretation and merely coincidental.
Their purpose isn’t to be helpful. They're there to sell you something, and nothing more. Any semblance of helpfulness is misinterpretation and merely coincidental.
Pithy, dismissive, reductionist, and wrong.
Yes, most of the bottom-feeding ads you see these days are along the lines of your description. But those are not the only ads, not the only method of advertising.
Good advertising is informative. iPod ads let people know that iPods exist. An ad for a new album lets you know that a band you like, but don't follow closely, has something you might want to try. An ad letting you know that "Chainsaw Y is on sale this week" is helpful for people thinking about buying a chainsaw. An ad demonstrating "Chainsaw A is as good as Chainsaw B, but costs less" is helpful for people considering an alternative.
The problem is the race-to-the-bottom mentality that has consumed the advertising industry since 2008. This is largely fueled by the ad tech industry which prioritizes things like "engagement" that can be presented in a pretty chart to middle managers, but don't actually mean anything. That's how you end up with all the obnoxious pop-ups and videos.
Ads for chainsaws on a chainsaw enthusiast web site is fine. Ads for a refrigerator I already bought two weeks ago is just a waste in a dozen ways.
Does nobody talk abot the elephant in the room? Will the answers the AI gives also be influenced by Googles customers?
for sure, i guess this is one of the experiments that confirms that would work https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/
> A search through GPT‑5.5’s SFT data found many datapoints containing “goblin” and “gremlin.” Further investigation revealed a whole family of other odd creatures: raccoons, trolls, ogres, and pigeons were identified as other tic words, while most uses of frog turned out to be legitimate.
I guess I'm used to seeing the english language being mangled by corp-speak but "creative" as a noun that doesn't even refer to a "creative" person (which also feels like a recent addition) really grates!
I thought "a creative" was the person who designs adverts, but I guess it's acting as a good filter, to filter out people like me, because I'm clearly not the target audience for this.