• by Ray Schultz , June 11, 2023

Google's AI search engine is a plagiarism engine, Tom's Hardware alleges.

The original copy read as:

“When I searched ‘which is faster the Ryzen 7 7800X3D or the Core i9-13900K,’ the Google SGE grabbed an exact phrase from our Tom's Hardware article comparing the two CPUs, Avram Piltch writes on the Tom's Hardware site. "It then rephrased two sentences from this article on Hardware Times."

According to Piltch, the original copy read as: “The Core i9-13900K snags a win in “A Plague Tale” both with and without ray-tracing. It's marginally faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D with similar lows. The tables get turned in Assassins’ Creed Valhalla as the 7800X3D edges past the 13900K in Ubisoft’s latest title.”

Google’s AI wrote it as: “The Core i9-13900K is marginally faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in 'A Plague Tale.' However, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D edges past the Core i9-13900K in Assassins' Creed Valhalla.”

Plitch adds that “our sentence is quoted word-for-word in Google’s “featured snippet” box but not in the SGE box (which will likely replace the featured snippets in the future since SGE does basically the same thing).”

Google insists that the copying is necessary.

“When I asked Google about the fact that its SGE answers are frequently word-for-word copies drawn from the related links articles, the company said that it picks those links because they “corroborate” the responses,” Plitch continues. 

“’Generative responses are corroborated by sources from the web,’ the spokesperson said,” Plitch adds. “And when a portion of a snapshot briefly includes content from a specific source, we will prominently highlight that source in the snapshot.”

Plitch argues, “It’s pretty easy to find sources that back up your claims when your claims are word-for-word copied from those sources.”

In conclusion, Plitch writes that while Google is telling the public that it wants to drive traffic to publishers, the SGE experience looks purpose-built to keep readers from leaving and going off to external sites, unless those external sites are ecomm vendors or advertisers.”

The Tom's Hardware article can be found here.