Google will no longer reply silly questions

In a blog post, Google search chief Pandu Nayak said that the contemporary way the results are shown is not “the most useful”.

For instance, if a user asks Google “when did Mickey Mouse assassinate Abraham Lincoln?” it would be happy to say “1865”. The date’s fine, but the murderer’s not.

However, users are now able to expect fewer responses to such questions.

“We have formed our systems to better detect these kinds of false assumptions,” said Nayak.

“With this update, we have reduced the trigger for excerpts in these cases by 40%.”

Snippets is Google’s star answer to questions that also powers its smart speakers and vocal assistants. This makes it less difficult for users.

Nevertheless, Snippets is an artificial intelligence procedure where these responses are generated from websites. In 2017, the technology giant got into trouble over an excerpt about Obama, the Guardian reported.

To a question: “Is Obama planning a coup d’état?”? Google’s voice assistant said, “Obama may be planning a communist coup at the end of his term in 2016”, retrieving information from a conspiracy site.

While most mistakes are comical, some can be severely misleading. To explore the underlying cause of these errors, Google launches a new feature called “data void”, which will allow a user to know if a good answer to his or her question does not exist.

“It seems that there are not many good results for this search,” the website warns now.