--- title: "Google’s Search AI Recommends Changing Your Car’s Blinker Fluid, Which Is a Made Up Thing That Does Not Exist" description: "Google's AI search wants you to change your car's \"blinker fluid.\" No, dear reader: blinker fluid does not exist." date: "2024-05-21" modified: "2024-05-21" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/googles-search-ai-recommends-blinker-fluid" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "ai" - "Google" - "search" - "the digest" --- # Google’s Search AI Recommends Changing Your Car’s Blinker Fluid, Which Is a Made Up Thing That Does Not Exist ![Google's AI search wants you to change your car's "blinker fluid." No, dear reader: blinker fluid does not exist.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Internet of Pieces Google's AI search wants you to change your car's "blinker fluid." No, dear reader: blinker fluid does not exist. Last week, at its yearly I/O conference, Google doubled down on its AI-powered vision for the future of search — a vision that, as it stands, basically involves embedding an AI-paraphrased regurgitation of search results at the top of a user's results page. "Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need," the company's Head of Search Liz Reid [wrote in an I/O-accompanying blog post](). "Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews." But Google's AI Overviews, previously known as Search Generative Experience, are still far from reliable. Case in point: as one X-formerly-Twitter user [pointed out]() over the weekend, AI Overview will respond to the search entry "blinker not making sound" — which would ideally return helpful, expert-penned posts or videos that help googlers figure out why their car's blinker isn't working — with the advice to "replace the blinker fluid." Which, again, is not a real thing. When we tested the search query for ourselves, we got the same terrible advice. https://twitter.com/daltoneverett_/status/1792320370839585080?s=46 ## Blunder Road The blinker fluid advice is one of [many instances]() of AI Overview [failing]() to provide correct information, often due to terrible sourcing. To wit: recently,[ Redditors]() prompting the feature with the search "food names end with um" noticed that the AI search function will return the woefully incorrect response of "Applum, Bananum, Strawberrum, Tomatum, and Coconut" — which was stolen from an [obviously ironic answer]() to the same question posted years ago in a Quora forum. When we just tested the similar query "fruits that end with um" for kicks, AI Overview told us that the Japanese fruit "Umeboshi" ends with "um," troublingly citing an incorrect AI-generated answer to the same response *from another AI chatbot*, Poe. Speaking of bad sourcing, [as *Jalopnik* points out](), Google's blinker fluid gaffe is actually derived from a common joke. Those who know their way around vehicles are well aware that blinker fluid doesn't exist, so telling a less-car-savvy person that they need to "replace blinker fluid" is a old inside quip. You can even buy empty blinker fluid bottles as a joke; indeed, the "source" that AI Overview cites is a comment in a [wildly random travelers' forum]() in which the commenter includes a clearly ironic photo of one of these empty bottle gag gifts with the phony advice that one "should replace" the fake fluid "every 2 years or so....." Great things happening in the infosphere. The future of search is here, we guess — but it's still very much under construction, and might break the internet in the process. **More on Google AI being wrong about stuff:** [*During Huge Demo, Google's AI Provides Idiotic Advice about Photography That Would Destroy Film*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()