Google’s AI search is so broken it can ‘disregard’ what you’re looking for

Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.Google’s AI Overviews are running into an interesting problem right now. As of this writing, if you search for the term “disregard,” instead of showing the usual AI-generated summary of search results, the AI Overview section instead includes a response like what you’d see from a more traditional AI chatbot, as called out by a post on X.To one Verge colleague searching “disregard”:Got it! Let me know if you need help with anything else.Nothing else followed in the AI Overview portion of the results page.To me, initially:No problem at all! How can I help you today?I searched for “disregard” again later and got another response, which you can see in the image at the top of this post.AI Overviews aren’t just tripping up over the word “disregard.” When searching for “ignore,” Google’s AI Overview section showed the following message to a Verge colleague:Message received! I’m here and ready to help. What would you like to focus on today? Just let me know if there’s a specific topic, task, or question you’d like to explore.When they searched “skip,” the AI Overview section said:It looks like your message was just a test or a typo! Feel free to ask a question, share a prompt, or let me know how I can help you with your tasks today. I’m ready whenever you are!Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment about what’s going on. However, this is almost certainly just some kind of funny bug. Maybe Google Search itself is tired after everything that happened at Google I/O.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jay Peters