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“Three Ways Customers Learn About Your Business from Google AI (and what you can do about it)"

· 5 min read
Chad Ratashak
Chad Ratashak
Owner, Midwest Frontier AI Consulting LLC

If you are a small business owner who wants nothing to do with AI, I appreciate that decision. Midwest Frontier AI Consulting supports business owners who want to use AI responsibly and business owners who want to make an informed decision not to use AI. However, you still need to learn about generative AI, even if only to avoid it and mitigate the negative effects.

Your customers are using AI to learn about your business, often without even realizing they are using AI. “Google” has been a verb for over two decades now according to Wikipedia, but “googling something,” hasn’t stayed the same. AI tools have moved into familiar areas like Google Search and Google Maps. Here are three ways your customers may be using generative AI to learn about your business from Google’s AI tools, and what you can do about it.

Google’s Gemini AI attempts to summarize website information and provide an overview. However, the AI summary can introduce errors ("hallucinations") that mislead customers. For example, a local Missouri pizzeria was inundated with customer complaints about “updated [sic, appears they meant to say ‘outdated’] or false information about our daily specials” described by Google’s AI Overview (Pizzeria’s Facebook Post).

What Not to Do​

Don’t call the information “fake” if it is really information taken out of context. For example, the pizzeria’s Facebook page shows they offer a deal for a large pizza for the price of a small pizza, but only on Wednesdays (outdated information). It is still legitimate to criticize the AI and it is still legitimate to tell customers who want the deal on another day of the week that the offer is only valid on Wednesdays. However, claiming the offer is “made up by the AI” will probably not calm down a customer who may then go to the business’s Facebook profile and see several posts about similar deals (but only on Wednesdays).

Don’t simply tell customers “Please don’t use Google AI.” The customers probably do not realize they are using AI at all. The AI Overview appears at the top of Google Search. Most people probably think they are “just googling it” like they always have and don’t realize the AI features have been added in. So warning them not to use something they didn’t opt into and aren’t actively aware of using is not going to help the situation.

What To Do​

  • AI-focused solutions. If AI is going to mix things up like this, you can try to: ** Delete old posts about deals that are not active or make temporary posts, so that AI hopefully won’t include the information in summaries later. ** Word posts carefully with AI in mind. Maybe “only on Wednesday” would be better than “EVERY Wednesday.” Spell out something that would be obvious to a human but not necessarily an AI, like “not valid on any other day of the week.”
  • Customer-focused solutions. Ultimately, it is hard to predict how the AI will act, though, so you will need to prepare for potentially angry customers: ** Train staff on how to handle AI-created customer confusion (or think about how you yourself will talk to customers about it). ** Post signs regarding specials and preempt some AI-created confusion.

“Ask”: Gemini Q&A in Google Maps​

Google Maps now has a feature with the Gemini logo (Google’s large language model) next to the word “Ask” that appears to be available only on mobile and not desktop. The feature still has a “New!” flag. Users can ask questions about the business location on Google Maps, and Gemini tries to answer using reviews of the business location. The AI summarizes the information, which may be incorrect, but also shows the users the reviews that are the source of the answers, which may help with accuracy. However, this also assumes that Google Maps reviews contain truthful and current information about your business.

What to Do​

Chatbots Built with Vertex AI Using Google Maps​

Google also offers access in the Vertex AI platform for large language model (LLM) chatbots to base their answers on information sourced from Google Maps. This means customers could also be sourcing information from Google Maps reviews through a chatbot from another company while not directly interacting with a Google product, “Grounding with Google Maps”. Google requires “The grounding sources must be viewable within one user interaction.”

info

Google defines grounding as “the ability to connect model output to verifiable sources of information.” However, Midwest Frontier AI Consulting would caveat that AI does not always faithfully summarize the sources it cites. Grounding reduces, but does not completely prevent hallucinations. Always check the sources.