Google Home exposed that Barack Obama is planning a coup to oust Donald Trump with the help of the Chinese Communist.
Apparently, the Google Home report was based on fake news. Barrack Obama is not plotting a rebellion to take over the US government. Read on to find out what really happened.
Google Home got it wrong, Barack Obama report is hoax
According to Telegraph, BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones asked Google Home if Barack Obama is organizing an attack against President Trump. The device then detailed a bogus conspiracy theory to breach the incumbent administration in the White House. "Not only could Obama be in bed with the communist Chinese, but Obama may, in fact, be planning a communist coup d'état," the device narrated.
Apparently, it quotes Google's own "featured snippets". Google Home basically got the wrong information about Barack Obama from an automatic algorithmic match provided by "featured snippets" to a given query. On the contrary, "Knowledge Graph" shows reliable, well-sourced replies.
To illustrate, a virtual bot delivers the particular detail from unreliable sources then Google Home simply reads it back to the user. The gadget uses "featured snippets" mainly because it would be impractical to read a long list of search results. Simply put, people tend to love the instant and easy-to-digest data like the Barack Obama false news.
Tech company apologizes for Google Home mistake
Engadget reported that Google issued a public apology after the incident. Currently, it is fixing bad results on a case-by-case basis. Amazon's Alexa, on the other hand, says "I can't find the answer to the question I heard" when asked with the same Obama query. Alexa is the rival brand of Google Home.
In any case, the tech giant definitely admits the issue with Google Home. It even stressed that there are times it "features a site with inappropriate or misleading content." Given the honest mistake with the Barack Obama report, Google confessed that "search is not perfect and it is hard to get it right all of the time."
