The Google Goes AI Everything While X Marks the Grok Edition

Webcology

Google AI Overviews are expanding test markets in Europe to Turkey, Sweden, and the Netherlands in advance of Google I/O. Google launched a free Generative AI Certification training program with the actual certification exam costing $99US. Google introduced "Discussions" in beta. Discussions is meant to replace Reddit as a primary source of livetime AI training resources by encouraging search users to add comments and conversation about specific topics which can then be used throughout the Google ecosystem. AI training is even more important as Google continues to commit to an AI Everything stance. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Grok has evolved from plucky truth-teller to insane drunken uncle over night with talk of genocides against white South Africans and questions about the validity of facts about the Holocaust. xAI suggests a rouge programmer is responsible however the chatbot's offensive rewriting of history continues at time of recording. Speaking of Grok, the Technology Transparency Project publicly flagged several X accounts as likely linked to US-sanctioned terrorist organizations. The group suggests terrorist groups are using Grok to write propaganda on their behalf. Furthermore, they suggest terrorist groups are using the X tip-button as a monetization tool. In other news, a Michigan State University researcher has linked belief in fake news stories to an emerging psychological issue called Problematic Social Media Use syndrome. In other news, Bing Search APIs are set to retire on August 11, 2025. The APIs will not be replaced however users are urged to consider Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents to incorporate realtime web data with generated LLM responses. We also learned that Google has been rethinking their search stack and are considering how fundamental components of search can be reimagined in a LLM environment. AIOverview links are all considered position 1 in Search console while 43% of AI Overview links point back to Google search results. All this and a lot more in a heavily Googlized edition.

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