AI/Copilot Interference with Search Questions

The exploitative nature of humans has, indeed, taken a firm grip on the World Wide Web.

Printed manufacturer data (soy based inks on recycled paper) is deemed a reliable source. Getting ahold of a current manufacturers print catalog then becomes the primary challenge. I have had to download an app to order print brochures… make this make sense.

The enterprise that once held promise of an extremely useful information source has become buckets of rubbish and misinformation.

Technology is not a panacea.

A sobering realization is that many consumers of the slop in this informational hog trough are individuals that will decide how we will spend our golden years.

Oh, man, is this way cool or what!

Not sure if this will help out our OP or not, but I am throwing a GA on it.

[edit] I wonder how long it will be until this sort of feature is behind a paywall, or maybe a monthly subscription fee… not that I am a cynic or anything…

I have pretty much abandoned Copilot! "They" did something that downgraded it. I had to point out something it should have done, all it said was "Something went wrong, please try again." In other words, quit when chastised! I've gone back to DuckDuckGo for searches.

I just used claude.ai to write a powershell script to remove bing, onedrive and copilot from win 10/11. It works well, as it turns them off, set's the registry and group policies, and uninstalls them. Problem is keeping up with the changes in clsid that get pushed up via windows updates. I'm working on that too. I do like this googler snubber though! I'm gonna GA that, and see if I can make a switch for firefox to turn the ai on and off. Very cool.

Thanks all and glad to see I'm not alone.

I'll see whether the blocker does anything. At home, I can see how it goes, but the controls at work might give me another hurdle to get over and that's where it is most concerning.

Heck, if it's good, our IT group might share this to other users as there is growing frustration.

For many things at work and home I've got "historic documents" in either true hard copy or scanned soft versions that are revision controlled.

click Images. you tend to get a faster and better context.

I came up with this pdq.

Standard Nail Size Table Chart and Nail Terms

Thanks.

That's very similar to what is in my workshop books.

In Australia we don't use the "penny" definition for nails, but I'm old enough to manage with the inch details.

Our "gauge" seemed to relate to the old Brittish system, but then modern sizes that I'm currently using are simply smaller than what was common.

I think the issue isn't AI itself, but relying on AI-generated summaries without checking the original sources. For technical topics, I usually look for manufacturer datasheets, standards documents, or engineering references rather than the AI overview at the top of the search results.

It's similar to projects where people ask how to make an AI voice assistant — the quality of the output depends heavily on the quality of the data and sources behind it. AI can be a great starting point, but for engineering details, primary documentation is still the gold standard.

If you'd like to know how to make an AI voice assistant, you can search for the relevant blog articles across the web.

Why would I ever want a voice assistant? Every "virtual assistant" I have come in contact with didn't know what I was asking!