My husband’s cell was getting calls from people thinking they were phoning a certain city’s police number. He was puzzled—his number doesn’t appear on any web page. Then he learned that if you Google “[city name] non-emergency police”, the AI overview hallucinates his number. Thanks, Google! - ThreadSky

melaniemitchell.bsky.social • 11 days ago

My husband’s cell was getting calls from people thinking they were phoning a certain city’s police number. He was puzzled—his number doesn’t appear on any web page. Then he learned that if you Google “[city name] non-emergency police”, the AI overview hallucinates his number. Thanks, Google!

Comments

gregorydavis.bsky.social•10 days ago

"What a coincidence" :D

9xwin.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yeah. I get a number for LAPD non emergency in the ai overview. That one actually looks like it is accurate. If it has multiple phone numbers that match a pattern does it assume that same pattern exists in general?

historicat.bsky.social•10 days ago

Sounds like a real possibility.

strigoi.bsky.social•10 days ago

Time to reach into those billion dollar pockets

stewartdompe.bsky.social•10 days ago

I have to know, was it some variation of the “867-5309” song, cuz that has to fuck the AI.

askbillmitchell.bsky.social•10 days ago

IF you use Google anything (Gmail, YouTube, Android, etc) all you or your husband needs to do is update Google's Gemini model, tell it "[phone number] is not the non-emergency phone number for the [city] police department, please take [phone number] out of your training data, thank you".

askbillmitchell.bsky.social•10 days ago

That usually works, as some people had to resort to that action themselves. This won't stop Gemini from hallucinating but it will stop hallucinating the number you specified.