Currently, Google AI is a real problem for me.

I can't successfully search using Google anymore. If I want to search images for a modelling project, for example, I get intercepted by Google AI who knows I used to edit one of the American modelling magazines amongst other things, thinks Lionel, MTH, Atlas are remotely scale model oriented companies, is directed by Google's accounts to push paid product placements, assumes I am shopping no doubt because the family uses my eBay and Amazon accounts, in short has built an inflexible profile of "me".

I'm sure that profile is skewed by the fact I have the settings on this thing to disallow cookies as much as possible (given it really does that; wink wink) and I have no social media accounts.

The result, should I want to find images of, say, a type of Pennsylvania Railroad gondola as a lettering reference, is pages of images of hirail and HO for sale from a hundred small vendors after eBay, Amazon, Worthpoint, Lionel, have all weighed in. Scores of images of these things don't have anything to do with the search parameters, either Pennsylvania or gondola. It rarely shows an image of the prototype (even when I put the word "prototype" in the search) and, when it does, it might easily be a photo of a Santa Fe hopper or an Aeronca Champ.

The usual search protocols no longer apply. Put either in quotes and nothing changes. Put a minus sign in front of Lionel or HO (in quotes) and no effect.

I can go to specific sites like RailPictures or Rail Picture Archives and find what I want, so I know it exists and can be found easily. Not using Google.

Google sometimes will ask "Do you mean..." when it thinks I need coaching as to spelling when I'm searching something, especially if what I'm searching bears resemblance to a paid product placement client. Then it gives an endless list having to do not with what I entered but what AI "thinks" I meant. Put my search in quotes since it won't allow me to answer its "Do you mean..." query and it repeats the entire result verbatim.

Then, not very far down the listings, AI has a fit, goes off the reservation, and starts showing images of any old bollocks having absolutely nothing to do with anything.

For fun, I've tried the same searches on my wife's machine, and the results are very different though just as useless.

It appears Amazon is using AI in its search function as well. I can search something very specifically, that search easily pushes their AI search engine off top dead centre, and I get pages of totally non-germane products.

I can't turn Google AI off, Google has become completely useless for purpose, but Google has a monopoly in the US apparently. Quite frankly the internet as a research tool has become quite literally useless to me because of Google and its use of monetised artificial intelligence. If I don't have a specific site bookmarked, I'm back to books for specific searches and even have had to resort a printed encyclopaedia for overviews of a general nature.

Currently, AI is a half-baked research project being foisted upon us as a real product and some sort of improvement to our lives. It has ruined our ability to access knowledge on the net.

Oh, for a competitor to Google. Even better, one that actually works like in the old days of the net.