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<\/p>\nWith a stellar cast led by Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey, Hot Milk, the film adaptation of Deborah Levy\u2019s 2016 novel about a mother who travels with her daughter to a Spanish clinic to cure her paralysis, was supposed to be one of the cultural highlights of the summer.<\/p>\n
In the event, the film flopped, with several scathing assessments from professional critics and a 37 per cent rating on the reviews website Rotten Tomatoes. The Times review called it an \u201cunfortunate directorial debut\u201d for Rebecca Lenkiewicz.<\/p>\n
But anyone who looked up the film on Google might have been persuaded otherwise. When we asked the search engine over the summer what the general consensus was on Hot Milk, the authoritative-looking Google AI overview tool at the top of the results told us the film\u2019s reviews had been \u201cgenerally positive, though somewhat mixed\u201d. Hmm.<\/p>\n
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Vicky Krieps and Emma Mackey in Hot Milk<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
Launched in May last year, Google\u2019s AI Overview<\/a> uses artificial intelligence to provide a summary of information at the top of a search results page. The information is pulled from various online sources so you don\u2019t need to spend ages trawling through various websites \u2014 it\u2019s all distilled there on Google.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for inspiration for which of the thousands of films on streaming platforms to watch, which book to read or exhibition to go to, this is designed to be a time-saving tool \u2014 aggregating the critics. In fact, given that Google has about 1.5 billion users worldwide, Google AI Overview is also the most popular critic around. But can you trust it?<\/p>\n \u2022 Hot Milk review \u2014 Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey stumble in the Spanish sun<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n I asked Google how The Times had rated Hot Milk, as someone might if they didn\u2019t have a subscription to the newspaper and so couldn\u2019t read it. It was, AI Overview confidently asserted, a \u201cmixed review\u201d. Really? Asked the exact same question again, just a few minutes later, Google, tail between its legs, admitted the review had been \u201cnegative\u201d. <\/p>\n It went further, telling us that the critic, Kevin Maher, had given the film a one-star rating and derided it as a \u201cfumbled, pretentious and utterly charmless adaptation\u201d of Levy\u2019s novel. The problem? Maher had given the film two stars, not one. And, while he was far from complimentary, the critic had not described the film as any of the things Google said it did. Google\u2019s AI Overview appears to have invented the quote and attributed it to him. <\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to poke fun at Google\u2019s AI Overview tool and its propensity to \u201challucinate\u201d, a term adopted by the tech industry to describe the phenomenon of a chatbot spitting out false, misleading or nonsensical information. <\/p>\n \u2022 Google\u2019s AI overviews are hallucinating \u2014 and it\u2019s getting worse<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n But, in an era when we have such a huge choice of films across cinema, terrestrial channels and streamers, Google \u2014 the world\u2019s biggest website, a trusted companion to billions \u2014 has immense power to influence our Saturday night schedules. You would hope, therefore, that it would at least be accurate and fair.<\/p>\n Beeban Kidron, a film-maker whose credits include directing Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, was disturbed by these findings. Kidron, a crossbench peer who has become an expert in AI while campaigning for chatbots to be forced to respect copyright laws<\/a>, says: \u201cIf the AI summary is actually sort of replacing Google as a tool, then the fact that it is not only inaccurate but making things up is very problematic for the world.\u201d <\/p>\n So, how does Google\u2019s AI Overview work? And how can a tool developed by one of the world\u2019s biggest tech superpowers get things so clumsily wrong? <\/p>\n The Silicon Valley company introduced AI Overviews as part of an effort to keep up with competition from chatbots. The fear for Google is that ChatGPT and its rivals will soon replace the traditional search engine by offering users instant answers, recommendations and a more personal touch. While Google has developed its own chatbot, Gemini, it also increasingly places AI Overview within search results.<\/p>\n \u2022 Ministers\u2019 silence on threats to our creatives is bewildering<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAI is going to completely replace search,\u201d says Laurence O\u2019Toole, the chief executive of Authoritas, which advises companies on how they can appear in AI searches. \u201cGoogle thinks AI Overviews are a good thing for users and a way for retaining its monopoly in search. So I think the days of traditional search are numbered<\/a> and that it is likely that we will get an AI-generated result for pretty much everything in the weeks and months ahead.\u201d <\/p>\n AI Overview claimed the live action Snow White was \u201ccaptivating\u201d despite being widely panned<\/p>\n WALT DISNEY PICTURES\/ALAMY<\/p>\n For example, you might ask: is the new Snow White (another big flop of 2025<\/a>) really that bad? The answer comes: \u201cThe live-action Snow White film<\/a> has polarised critics, with some calling it \u2018captivating\u2019 and \u2018mostly captivating\u2019 while others find it \u2018exhaustingly awful\u2019 and a \u2018missed opportunity\u2019.\u201d It then provides a list of sources: a YouTube video, a Reddit feed, user reviews on IMDb and three BBC news articles reporting on the critical response to Snow White. Here it\u2019s worth noting that, while the trade magazine the Hollywood Reporter did describe the movie as \u201cmostly captivating\u201d, none of the largely negative sources for Google\u2019s answer described Snow White as entirely \u201ccaptivating\u201d, as AI Overview claimed. <\/p>\n For Google, hallucinations, which occur when there are gaps in the data its AI tools have been trained on, are not new. In one infamous case, a user was advised that adding non-toxic glue to a pizza sauce could help the cheese to stick better. In another case, it tried to claim that the phrase \u201cyou can\u2019t lick a badger twice\u201d was a common idiom. <\/p>\n \u2022 Can\u2019t lick a badger twice: how AI invents meaning for nonsense sayings<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Google \u2014 ChatGPT and other AI tools are regularly noted to confidently assert mistruths as facts. But for film buffs, Google, having established itself over years as a reliable source of reviews and information, is for now the troublemaker to watch. <\/p>\n Over a series of Google searches, we identified numerous oddities and issues with AI Overview. \u201cCritics are divided\u201d on Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy<\/a>, which generally attracted rave reviews. A consensus on the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer<\/a>? \u201cMixed.\u201d <\/p>\n O\u2019Toole said that from his company\u2019s recent experiments with Google, it seemed that AI Overview had been \u201ctuned to be neutral\u201d. For reviews, that may sound dull and lacking in conviction, but at least it also implies fairness and balance.<\/p>\n However, we found that AI Overview does not appear to give every film the benefit of the doubt. The makers of Disney\u2019s recent live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch<\/a> \u2014 \u201cheartfelt but uneven\u201d, according to AI Overview \u2014 might feel hard done by. In this case, Google\u2019s acerbic take was that, while young people might enjoy the recent remake (which scores 92 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes\u2019 Popcornmeter measure of viewer ratings), for many it \u201cfalls short of matching the quality and charm of the 2002 animated film\u201d (which had a Popcornmeter score of 78 per cent).<\/p>\n One of the most glaring problems with Google\u2019s tool is the lack of consistency. Ask the search engine whether Mission: Impossible,The Final Reckoning<\/a> is critically acclaimed, and AI Overview will tell you it had indeed \u201creceived a generally positive reception from critics\u201d. Ask again, seconds later, and you are informed the movie \u201cis not widely considered critically acclaimed\u201d. <\/p>\n While it is often correct, we also found numerous instances of the tool misrepresenting or misquoting professional critics. When asked about the Sunday Times review of Superman<\/a>, Google reported that Tom Shone had praised a \u201ccompassionate character\u201d, when he had done no such thing in his five-star review. It also claimed he had given Freakier Friday<\/a> four stars when in fact he gave it three stars, and 28 Years Later<\/a>, for which he gave three stars, was a five-star film according to AI.<\/p>\n Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in Freakier Friday<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Asked how The Times had rated Die, My Love, AI Overview confidently reported that it had received a zero-star rating. Wow \u2026 but is that true? Asked the same question seconds later, Google said in fact The Times had not given it a rating. Sure? On the third search, AI Overview plumped for two stars. Then minus one. Only on the fifth search did Google identify \u2014 or, presumably, guess \u2014 the right answer: one star. <\/p>\n \u2022 \u2018Friendly\u2019 bots, a contradiction that can only end in disaster<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n A spokesperson for Google suggested that AI Overview is improving all the time. They said: \u201cWe aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements. When issues arise \u2014 like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context \u2014 we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies.\u201d<\/p>\n But Kidron, who is supportive of useful AI technology, says there are several issues here. One is that Google is effectively \u201cnicking [copyrighted media] property and then it\u2019s reproducing something that\u2019s rubbish\u201d. Another is that, as she\u2019s found in her work around AI technology, people are coming to rely on chatbots for the sort of advice they might have once sought out from friends and family<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cAny film-maker will tell you that word of mouth is a key aspect of whether a film succeeds or not,\u201d she says. \u201cSo you can have a film that\u2019s reviewed badly but does really well through word of mouth, and you can have a film that reviews brilliantly but people say, \u2018Meh, don\u2019t bother.\u2019 What\u2019s interesting and crucial to understand is that the way that people are responding to AI is very much as if they are \u2018people\u2019s\u2019 recommendations.\u201d It\u2019s her theory that AI sometimes tells you \u201cwhat they think you want to hear\u201d, so really it should be difficult to trust its film recommendations. <\/p>\n![\"Snow](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/607f1ac6-5315-48f3-b685-6f98709960f7.jpg\")
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