Google Search has become a viral ordeal over a weird quirk that has emerged after users realised they could no longer get the typical definition and links when typing the word “disregard” into the search bar, but they did get results from an AI chatbot that they would otherwise be unlikely to receive. Google’s strange action brought questions about the company’s increasingly AI-driven search to the forefront and caused Internet confusion.
Usually, people will type a word like “disregard” in Google and expect to find some dictionary definition, synonyms, links, etc., from trusted sites. Many users, however, found that the search engine responded with very short, conversational answers, as if it were a command, not a query. Some answers were reportedly like chatbot acknowledgements, such as the phrase that would make it seem like the system had “understood” a command rather than provide search results.
The issue seems to be tied to Google’s recently launched AI-powered Search experience feature that shows AI-generated summaries front-page first on search results. The critics complained that the system misreads words that were meant to be commands like skip, ignore and disregard, as prompts to the AI, instead of just dictionary searches. This meant that users were left with little or unrelated content generated by AI, and traditional search links had been pushed further down the page.
The unusual behaviour rapidly took off on social media, with screenshots proliferating, and many users chiming in with the joke that even a basic search online was unpredictable. The incident has been called an embarrassing setback for Google’s much-touted AI upgrade, and some tech types even claimed that it briefly provided better, more useful results for the same query.
Google admitted there was an issue and said they were working on a patch, according to reports. Later in the day, the responses of certain words, such as disregard were claimed to be deleted or modified as engineers worked on the matter. The issue was attributed to the company’s interpretation of certain “action” based queries through its AI systems.
The incident is particularly salient at a time when Google is advancing its biggest change to Search in years. AI tools are meant to speed up search and make it more conversational, but critics say that glitches like these make for some real concerns about accuracy and usefulness, particularly if the simple queries don’t lead to simple answers.
Until now, users wanting to use “disregard” in the sense of “to ignore” will have to keep scrolling down the page or head to dictionary websites directly, which is just as ironic as the internet’s dominant search engine.