For hunters trying to follow the law, it’s arguably never been harder to find a clear answer to the question, “when does hunting season officially begin?”
The answer to that question is particularly obscure in Alaska, where hunters have to abide by a virtual catalog of conditional rules and regulations that vary wildly based on where in the Last Frontier one wants to hunt. As one woman learned the hard way, not even supposedly cutting-edge AI can make heads or tales of the morass of ordinances.
As the Alaska Beacon reported, Christina Weaver, a resident of the port city of Kodiak, was surprised to learn that she was accidentally poaching birds after following the advice of Google’s AI overviews.
After learning that Alaska’s general waterfowl season doesn’t begin until October 8, Weaver became suspicious that she had broken the law by harvesting three wilson’s snipes in September — adorably pudgy shorebirds with characteristically long bills. Though snipes are common birds with a stable population across North America, late summer coincides with their transition out of breeding season and the beginning of their fall migration.
As Weaver told the Beacon, the confusion came about as a result of a search for “Alaska snipe season.” The prominent AI overview displayed at the top of the Google search results claimed that “snipe season” began on September 1st — which is true of some Alaska regions, but not others, like Kodiak.
Alarmed by the accidental poaching, Weaver turned herself in to an Alaska Wildlife officer, who noted in his affidavit that his own search for “snipe season” yielded similar results. Still, he notes that had “Christina [done] more research… she would have learned that snipes can be legally taken from Oct 8th through Jan 22nd.”
Google did not return the Beacon‘s request for comment.
“I feel terrible, and I have a lot of shame with it,” Weaver told the Beacon. “Obviously, that’s why I immediately self-reported once I got home and dived into the regs. It’s incredibly embarrassing.”