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