btm said:

Way back when I was a young teenager I read an anthology of short stories, one of which contained the line “It has to be Amberezzio.” That line, for some (or no) reason has stuck with me, even though I’d forgotten the title of the story or the author. I did remember the events in the story, though. A couple of years ago I tried to find the line with google; it told me the story was The Gift, originally published as A Day of Wine and Roses in Sports Illustrated in 1973, written by Dick Francis. I’ve reread the story and confirmed it was the one I’d read. I’d even remembered the correct spelling of the character’s name.

Today, out of curiosity, I tried asking google the same question; it found nothing. Its AI tried to tell me that “Amberezzio” is not a known character in any book, or story, nor the title or author of any of them. Duckduckgo told me the same thing. Google’s AI instead found completely unrelated links about homosexuality.

Google’s AI seems to have worsened its search engine results to the point of uselessness, at least in some cases.

I agree with you.

A few weeks back I (deliberately) ran the same search through eight separate instances of Google search and got eight different incorrect answers. Some were clearly made up. Others side-stepped and gave an answer to a different, but somewhat related search.

Similarly yesterday. It recommended web-sites that did not answer the question I asked, although the AI had given an answer citing the site.