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Google AI repeated meme claims about Flock license cameras’ gold and copper
The incorrect answer cited purported scrap values, but the camera’s actual weight is about 3 pounds, leading Google’s own Overview to later revise the claim.
Google’s AI Overview briefly repeated an online joke as if it were factual, claiming a Flock license plate camera reader contains up to 23 pounds of copper and several grams of gold, with a scrap value of roughly $650 per camera.
Yahoo Finance reports that Futurism traced the claim to two sources that were not reliable, including a Substack post from an anonymous account that framed the figures as estimates from scrap-value discussions, and an AI-generated Instagram post urging viewers to tear into the hardware.
The story says Google’s AI presented the information in a prominent slot, above real webpages, even though Flock cameras are used to photograph license plates and feed the data into police databases.
By Aug. 6, after TechSpot’s Skye Jacobs checked, Yahoo Finance reports the Overview changed, stating the copper claim could not be true given the camera’s roughly 3 pound weight and that any gold would be trace-level, and it characterized the rumor as stemming from internet memes and AI hallucination.
Latest closeGold $4,292.00 ▲1.1%|Copper $6.711 ▲0.1%