Google AI Overview falsely claims Flock cameras packed with gold and copper worth hundreds of dollars

Google's AI Search Reportedly Told Users That Flock Cameras Are a Goldmine

There are a lot of reasons to want Flock cameras removed from your neighborhood. That said, harnessing the gold and copper from them is probably not one of them. Unfortunately, Google's AI Overview may have given people the idea that they can run smash-and-grab operations to cash in on the metals inside the invasive eyes of the surveillance state. It's become a running joke online and in privacy-focused communities that Flock cameras contain valuable material like gold, copper, and zinc, a bit meant to (jokingly!) encourage people to smash open the cameras and take what's inside. Google's AI Overview doesn't have much of a sense of humor and, according to Futurism, took it literally. The publication found that, for a time, the results insisted that Flock cameras contained as much as 5 grams of gold and up to 23 pounds of copper -- even though the cameras only weigh about three pounds. The results do appear to be fixed now. When asked about the amount of gold or copper in a Flock camera, Google now spits out some version of the following: "Viral internet rumors and AI hallucinations claiming a single unit holds 2 to 23 pounds of copper are completely false, as the entire camera housing weighs only about 3 pounds." Critically, Google's source for this information is Futurism's report on Google's AI stating that Flock cameras are full of gold and copper. We're all trying to find the guy who did this. Gizmodo reached out to Google for comment on this but did not receive a response at the time of publication. It's not hard to find examples of Google's AI Overviews falling for obvious nonsense. The feature has been making these kinds of mistakes since the company began cramming AI into nearly every corner of the Google experience. Remember when it advised people to put glue on pizza to keep the cheese from sliding off after mistaking a Reddit joke for legitimate cooking advice? Unfortunately, there are much higher-stakes situations that AI Overview continues to struggle with getting right. A report from the States United Democracy Center shared by CyberScoop on Wednesday reviewed the accuracy of Google's results when people search for election information. It found that the search engine's AI failed to direct people to their state's official election information in about half of all cases. It also found that up until this year, Google was providing misinformation related to elections in nearly 7% of all responses. To be fair, AI responses related to elections have significantly improved since 2024, when researchers found that Google's Gemini AI got election-related information wrong about 43% of the time. It's an election year. Make sure you're getting good information about who is on the ballot, how to register to vote, and when your local elections will take place. As for the Flock cameras, well, you never know what will happen if you crack one open and see what's in there.

Google's AI Is Telling Users That Flock Cameras Are Filled With Valuable Gold and Copper

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Google's notorious AI Overview just handed would-be Flock vandals a perfect excuse to carve into the company's controversial AI-integrated license plate readers (ALPRs). ALRPs are wildly unpopular, especially online, where privacy-minded communities trade memes and videos cheering on destruction of the surveillance equipment. One of the more popular bits in this space centers on the idea that Flock's ALPR's are supposedly packed with valuable metals like gold, copper, and zinc -- so, the tongue-in-cheek riffing goes, why not crack one open and cash in at the nearest scrapyard? Clever or not, the meme hinges on a spurious claim. ALPRs do contain trace amounts of gold and other metals, just not enough to be worth the trouble. Unless you're well versed in breaking down circuit boards, you'd be hard pressed to earn enough to buy a Big Mac, let alone recoup your labor costs. Google, itself an exemplar of AI-enabled surveillance, apparently missed the joke. Search "how much gold does a Flock camera have" and Google's AI Overview doesn't even push back a little bit. Instead, it flatly asserts that a "Flock safety camera contains about 1 to 5 grams of gold used in its internal circuit boards and wiring." (At today's gold prices, that would mean each Flock camera contained up to $650 of gold.) Google goes on to claim that Flock's ALPRs hold anywhere from two to 23 pounds of copper, which would be an engineering marvel considering the whole device only weighs three pounds. Google's AI Overview cites two sources to back up its summary, and neither holds up. The first is an anonymous Substack post from an account called do.not.obey.do.not.comply, claiming the "rough scrap value of these metals per camera is estimated to be $150 to $500." Google's summary skips the fine print, however: that figure comes from "estimates based on scrap-value discussions" -- vibes, in other words, as opposed to actual reporting or financial information. The second is an AI-generated Instagram post riffing on the same meme, egging vandals on to gut the camera to access their supposedly precious innards. The account behind that post seems to belong to a weed grower, with most other posts about plant cloning, hydroponics, and fully grown cannabis flower. There's a real irony buried in all this AI slop: one AI-surveillance company's search engine is quietly manufacturing an excuse to destroy another AI-surveillance company's product. If that doesn't sum up the current state of the AI-obsessed tech industry, nothing will. Google has not yet responded to a request for comment.