Google AI Told Users Flock Cameras Contain Gold and Copper—Turning a Meme Into Misinformation

Google's AI told people Flock cameras were full of gold. They weren't.

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Facepalm: For a short while, Google's AI Overviews handed the internet a financial case for vandalizing Flock's AI-powered license plate cameras, and it wasn't based on anything real. Google has since walked the answer back, but the incident is a clean example of how quickly a widely used AI tool can turn a joke into something that looks like fact. The story starts with a meme: privacy advocates joking online that Flock's surveillance cameras are secretly loaded with valuable metals, worth cracking open for scrap. AI Overviews took the joke literally, and for a while, told anyone who asked exactly that. Until recently, anyone searching "how much gold does a Flock camera have" saw a confident answer: a "Flock safety camera contains about 1 to 5 grams of gold used in its internal circuit boards and wiring," plus between two and 23 pounds of copper. Taken literally, that put roughly $650 worth of gold, and an implausible amount of copper, inside a device that weighs just three pounds. The figures didn't match what engineers would expect from this kind of compact electronics, and of course weren't backed by teardown data or materials analysis. Image credit: Futurism After the discrepancy was reported, Google appears to have updated the answer. The AI answer now pushes back directly, telling searchers that claims of a single unit holding pounds of recoverable copper are false since the whole housing weighs about three pounds, and that any gold present is only in trace amounts typical of small consumer electronics. Some users saw this new language, too: "A Flock safety camera only contains trace amounts of gold in its standard electronic circuit boards, similar to most common small electronics. Rumors claiming the cameras are packed with large amounts of valuable precious metals - like ounces or grams of recoverable gold - come from internet memes and AI hallucinations, not facts." Flock's cameras sit at the center of a growing AI surveillance network. The units use cameras and machine learning models to capture license plate images, translate them into machine-readable text, and feed that data into searchable databases used by police and private customers. The process is automated end to end: the system scans passing vehicles, runs the plates through recognition software, and surfaces hits in seconds. Those capabilities - continuous data capture, AI-based identification, and fast search across large datasets - have made Flock a focal point in debates over how far automated monitoring should go, especially as reports emerge of officers using the system for unauthorized checks on romantic partners. The technology has also become a lightning rod because it reflects where modern security tools are headed: networked cameras, automated recognition, and large, queryable datasets about everyday movement. Online, the backlash has spawned an ecosystem of memes and videos celebrating the destruction or sabotage of the cameras. One recurring joke casts Flock's units as high-tech piñatas, packed with gold, copper, and other metals rich enough to make vandalism pay. The premise is simple: cut down the hardware, crack it open, strip out the "valuable" components, and cash in at the scrapyard. The underlying economics don't hold up. Like most electronics, the cameras contain small amounts of precious and base metals in their boards, connectors, and wiring, but the quantities are tiny, and extracting them takes time, tools, and know-how. Without experience breaking down circuit boards, the realistic payoff is closer to pocket change than a serious cash haul. The meme glosses over that reality. Google's earlier AI Overview answer lent the meme a veneer of credibility, repeating it almost verbatim and backing it with two weak sources. The first was 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." The post itself admitted the figures came from "estimates based on scrap-value discussions," not testing, teardown documentation, or formal analysis. The second was an AI-generated Instagram post urging people to rip apart Flock cameras for scrap. The account mostly posts about growing weed, plant cloning, and hydroponics, with no apparent expertise in hardware engineering. For people using AI systems, the episode is a reminder of how easily a summarization tool can turn casual speculation into what looks like a technical statement. The model scans available content, finds material that fits the question, and stitches it into a clean, confident-sounding answer. In this case, nothing suggests it checked whether the numbers made sense for a three-pound device, or weighed the credibility of anonymous and AI-generated sources. The output sounded certain even though the underlying data was flimsy. The episode also exposes how prone AI models still are at missing context. The scrap-value narrative around Flock is part humor, part protest against AI-driven surveillance, exaggerating the hardware's value to make a point about the cameras themselves. Google's system didn't get the joke. It treated the posts as straightforward claims and repeated them as facts.

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.