The ecommerce giant is now selling access to the tech behind its Alexa for Shopping assistant, giving other retailers — like Kate Spade — abilty to build their own AI shopping chatbot. Amazon says its AI shopping interface can offer personalized recommendations with images and pricing, as well as answer store policy questions.
Since Friday, Google hasn’t shown an AI Overview for the word “disregard.” The term was making AI Overviews “disregard” instructions instead of giving an AI search result summary.
As of this morning, however, when I search for “disregard,” Google shows an old-school featured snippet with the definition, sourced from vocabulary.com. I prefer this, but I assume the AI Overview will return soon enough.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
Since Google announced its Search box overhaul at I/O last week, DuckDuckGo says its own iOS installs have increased by an average of 33 percent week over week in the US. Visits to the “No AI” version of DuckDuckGo’s search platform also jumped by up to 27.7 percent compared to the week prior.
Steve Jobs famously told Houston his startup was “a feature, not a product” when trying to acquire it back in 2009. Houston turned down the nine-figure buyout offer and Apple went on to launch iCloud. Houston, now 43 and worth about $2 billion, leaves behind a service used by millions worldwide. He now wants to do something entrepreneurial with — you guessed it — AI.
As noted on Bluesky, if you search “is it 2027 next year,” Google’s AI Overviews occasionally state that 2027 is two years from now. But this apparently isn’t even a new issue: when I got AI Overviews to mess up, it cited old Instagram and Reddit posts making fun of wrong responses to the same query.
By the way, Google still isn’t showing an AI Overview when you search “disregard.” AI Overviews are going just great!
How Google’s CEO is reshaping the company — and the internet.
The environmental activist and former legal clerk who’s life was made into a movie in 2000 is also logging local complaints about data center projects in their communities. Brockovich writes:
“The RACE to build AI infrastructures is unfolding town by town across America. In some places, data centers are welcomed. In others, they are delayed, contested or abandoned altogether. This MAP captures the real-world footprint of that race — revealing patterns of growth, conflict and uncertainty.
[Brockovich Data Center Reporting]
