A recent Reddit post has struck a nerve among frustrated students — and pretty much anyone who's ever tried to look something up online and gotten a face full of AI-generated nonsense instead.
Posted in the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, the now-viral image shows a Google search result for Joe Pesci's age when he filmed Home Alone in 1990. Simple enough, right?
It would be simple except for one glaring issue. The AI-generated response was off — not by an inch but by a mile. The result stated Pesci's age in 1990 as 81 years old. That would make the actor somewhere around 116 years old today. If that's the case, Pesci looks astonishingly good for his age.
"Remember when you could Google stuff and find what you were looking for? That was nice," one commenter wrote.
"We're doomed," another added.
The post highlights a growing frustration with how major tech platforms flood basic searches with AI summaries — often incorrect or misleading — while burying actual sources. For students trying to get quick facts for assignments or reports, errors like this are more than annoying. They're disruptive.
Here's the kicker — these AI answers aren't just wrong, they're wasteful. It takes way more energy (and even water) to generate one of these AI blurbs than it does to just show you a regular search result. Teen Vogue cited a 2024 International Energy Agency report that estimated it's up to 10 times more power per question. Not only are we getting sketchy answers, we're also leaving a bigger environmental mess behind just to Google something simple.
If you've ever had a Google search that totally missed the mark, you know the struggle is real. Share this post with your friends to let them know they're not alone in this wild AI search fiasco.
Whether you're a student trying to do homework or just someone who's had a "wait, what?" moment with Google, this one's for you. The more we laugh (and maybe panic a little), the more we can push for better — and greener — tech.
"Right? Google was so good, now I need to fact-check Google," one Redditor said.
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Another user had a helpful tip: "I've found quite a few Chrome extensions that straight up remove AI overview from search results. Might be useful."
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