Distinguished Canadian Musician Says Gig Was Cancelled After Google AI Overview Wrongly Branded Him Intercourse Pest

Distinguished Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he was wrongly branded a convicted intercourse offender by Google’s AI Overview function, main live performance organizers to cancel a gig final week. 

Earlier than we proceed, I’ll want you to observe the music video for “Sleepy Maggie” by Ashley MacIsaac (with Scottish Gaelic vocals by Mary Jane Lamond). Not being from Canada the place this tune was successful in 1995, I had by no means been handled to this luxurious feast of 90s imagery and sounds earlier than as we speak, however that oversight has been corrected because of this information occasion. For greatest outcomes, gentle up a clove cigarette earlier than pushing play:

Anyway, in line with an article in The Globe and Mail on Tuesday, the man in that video with the fiddle, Ashley MacIsaac, was getting ready to carry out on the Sipekne’katik First Nation group in central Nova Scotia when organizers out of the blue backed out, apparently having learn that MacIsaac had ghastly sounding convictions on his document for sexual assault and “web luring.”

It later emerged, MacIsaac says, that these organizers had seen a Google AI Overview consequence that had blended up MacIsaac’s biography with another, rather more horrible, MacIsaac, additionally from japanese Canada. 

You most likely bear in mind the controversy over the Google AI Overviews function from again in 2024, when it debuted, and quickly became a joke after telling folks to place glue on pizza and such. Personally, I gave the function six months to enhance before reviewing it, and located a lot of weird error varieties it was nonetheless inclined to creating in what I believed have been believable simulations of actual world use circumstances. Google advised me on the time it nonetheless had “work to do on the standard facet of issues.”

If MacIsaac’s characterization is true, it nonetheless does, and it actually must not make errors just like the one alleged right here. There’s a selection quote within the Globe and Mail from Clifton van der Linden, an assistant professor at McMaster College who has researched AI misinformation. “We’re seeing a transition in search engines like google and yahoo from data navigators to narrators,” he advised the newspaper.

AI Overviews are unique snippets of textual content, kind of like chatbot solutions made recent to order when a time period will get Searched on Google, and so they’re derived from no matter Google can discover on-line that appears to narrate to the topic you’re looking. You by no means understand how somebody may phrase a search about you, as a result of the probabilities are countless, and thus, you by no means understand how the AI Overview may go unsuitable.

MacIsaac wonders within the Globe and Mail piece if different folks had Googled him, and seen comparable outcomes with out telling him. He views this as a possible trigger for concern, as a result of he thinks he might have misplaced work, or gained an enemy who believed what they learn and determined to trigger him hurt.

For what it’s value, Google spokesperson Wendy Manton advised the Globe and Mail the next: “Search, together with AI Overviews is dynamic and continuously altering to indicate probably the most useful data. When points come up – like if our options misread net content material or miss some context – we use these examples to enhance our methods, and will take motion underneath our insurance policies.” That newspaper additionally says Google “amended search outcomes for the musician.” 

Additionally, a consultant from the Sipekne’katik First Nation group advised MacIsaac they “We deeply remorse the hurt this error brought on to your repute, your livelihood, and your sense of private security,” and advised him he was welcome to carry out there sooner or later, he says. The Globe and Mail didn’t hear again from Sipekne’katik First Nation once they requested a remark.

This all feels like a variety of bother for lots of people to undergo over an obvious AI hallucination. However hey, at the least I discovered about “Sleepy Maggie.”