As the AI revolution continues, one of its most useful functions is offering concise overviews of whatever goods and services you are looking for. This can really help if there are several sources offering what you are looking for, whether it is buying a car or taking out taxi insurance.
Convenience
By simply typing in a keyword or phrase, search engines such as Google crawl the internet and summarise whatever you have searched for, pulling information from websites, social media, etc, and presenting a snapshot of a business.
It saves you trawling through taxi insurance websites to decide which cover best meets your needs. What could take you several minutes or visits is done in a split second, with the results at the top of the search engine.
And people are making the most of this function, with many making big decisions, such as buying cars or booking garages for servicing, based purely on AI overviews, instead of going to a car dealer or insurer’s website.
As efficient and time saving as this is, concerns have been raised about the accuracy of the overviews it produces. While it instantly draws on a variety of sources to summarise, it can mix things up and not only give a false impression about something, it can also be factually incorrect.
In fact, Google itself acknowledges the issues surrounding accuracy and suggests people should “always check important info in more than one place”.
It also recommends asking multiple versions of your question to get the best answers, as well as sending feedback to Google if something doesn’t look right.
Starting point
In some instances, it might not matter that the overview isn’t accurate. For example, people might not be too bothered if it says a particular make of vehicle is available in 10 colours when it only comes in four, and it is a starting point to narrow the field.
But relying on unclear information when taking out or renewing a taxi insurance policy would be a disaster for a driver’s business. In the event of a claim, the wrong level of cover could see them out of pocket and the wrong type of cover may even leave them open to prosecution and threaten their livelihood.
The message is that while AI-generated overviews save time, they must be checked carefully, and treated as suggestions, rather than facts.
Though it might narrow the field of websites to choose, people must still make their own, informed choices and ensure what they are buying meets their needs.
