There are a lot of reasons to want Flock cameras removed from your neighborhood. That said, harnessing the gold and copper from them is probably not one of them. Unfortunately, Google\u2019s AI Overview may have given people the idea that they can run smash-and-grab operations to cash in on the metals inside the invasive eyes of the surveillance state.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s become a running joke<\/a> online and in privacy-focused communities that Flock cameras contain valuable material like gold, copper, and zinc, a bit meant to (jokingly!) encourage people to smash open the cameras and take what\u2019s inside. Google\u2019s AI Overview doesn\u2019t have much of a sense of humor and, according to Futurism<\/a>, took it literally. The publication found that, for a time, the results insisted that Flock cameras contained as much as 5 grams of gold and up to 23 pounds of copper\u2014even though the cameras only weigh about three pounds.<\/p>\n The results do appear to be fixed now. When asked about the amount of gold or copper in a Flock camera, Google now spits out some version of the following: \u201cViral internet rumors and AI hallucinations claiming a single unit holds 2 to 23 pounds of copper are completely false, as the entire camera housing weighs only about 3 pounds.\u201d Critically, Google\u2019s source for this information is Futurism\u2019s report on Google\u2019s AI stating that Flock cameras are full of gold and copper. We\u2019re all trying to find the guy who did this.<\/p>\n Gizmodo reached out to Google for comment on this but did not receive a response at the time of publication.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to find examples of Google\u2019s AI Overviews falling for obvious nonsense. The feature has been making these kinds of mistakes since the company began cramming AI into nearly every corner of the Google experience. Remember when it advised people to put glue on pizza<\/a> to keep the cheese from sliding off after mistaking a Reddit joke for legitimate cooking advice?<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there are much higher-stakes situations that AI Overview continues to struggle with getting right. A report<\/a> from the States United Democracy Center shared by CyberScoop<\/a> on Wednesday reviewed the accuracy of Google\u2019s results when people search for election information. It found that the search engine\u2019s AI failed to direct people to their state\u2019s official election information in about half of all cases. It also found that up until this year, Google was providing misinformation related to elections in nearly 7% of all responses.<\/p>\n