Google Home gives a wild answer if you ask 'is Obama planning a coup?'

9 months ago

Google, for the most part, has managed to stay out of the global fake news debate – with sites such as Facebook receiving a lot more flak.

But after an investigation into how YouTube, part of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is proving very popular with the alt-right, something else happened.

The top story promoted on Google when the question “is Obama planning a coup” was typed into the search engine came from conspiracy website Secrets of the Fed, with the preview suggesting that Obama was a Communist “in bed with” the Chinese, and who may have been planning a coup for the end of his term.

That’s Danny Sullivan, journalist and founder of the blog Search Engine Land, highlighting what he’s labelled Google’s attempt at providing “one true answer” – you know, how when over recent years if you type a question into Google the site will provide an answer in a separated box at the top, rather than just a list of results.

BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones decided to test it out on Google Home, the new virtual assistant which is yet to officially launch in the UK.

Incredibly, he was given the same information from the same site.

OK so ignore how funny it is that Google Home doesn’t know how to pronounce coup d’etat, and just think about all of the possible websites Google could have chosen to answer that question, and the one that it did.

It’s not anything intentional on Google’s part, rather their algorithm has picked out pages that rank highly in search results – but those are not always the sites with the correct answer.

It’s an issue Google is aware of, and has reportedly intervened in some instances since this piece in the Guardian, while users can also leave feedback on a featured snippet letting Google know that an answer might be wrong.

But in the meantime it looks like on some occasions you should take that top Google answer with a pinch of salt.