Science Google is currently struggling to define words like disregard, stop and ignore

Engadget / Archive

Google appears to be running into some hiccups after the company began rolling out its updated, and even more AI-focused search experience at I/O 2026. Currently, searching for the words "disregard," "stop" or "ignore" on Google no longer displays a snippet with a definition, and instead offers an AI Overview and a lot of blank space. Because users have complained about the issue on social media, and publications like TechCrunch and Macrumors have reported on it, even if you don't get a definition, you might still get a collection of links to articles documenting the issue before the traditional list of links.

Multiple members of Engadget's staff were able to recreate the strange AI Overview responses with their own personal Google searches. In Incognito Mode, Google responded correctly once by displaying its usual snippet with the definition, and failed a second time by once again responding with an AI Overview. Links to online dictionaries still appear under these incorrect results, but you have to scroll past an AI Overview or a grid of articles to actually get to them.

Engadget contacted Google for more information. The company responded acknowledging the issue and said a fix was incoming: "We're aware that AI Overviews are misinterpreting some action-related queries, and we're working on a fix, which will roll out soon," a spokesperson said.

In the grand scheme of things, Google not automatically displaying a definition isn't as bad as recommending people put glue on pizza, one of the issues the company dealt with when it first launched AI Overviews. It might even be good for Merriam-Webster's web traffic. What the issue does highlight is the awkward transition Google is currently undergoing, as it moves from the ultimate referrer of other websites into all-in-one AI assistant.

Update, May 22 2026, 5:45PM ET: This story was modified after publish to include a statement from a Google spokesperson on the issue.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

And web browsers too?

Google open sourced the core functionality of Chrome when it was the best in breed browser, and the rest of Big Tech (sans Apple) are too cheap to write and maintain a suitable competitor, which means your only mainstream non-chromium browsers are Firefox and Safari.

That and non power-users are mostly only want Nigger Technology means it’s impossible to get market penetration for alternatives.

 

[Neodanthril]

How'd Google get a monopoly in searches and video hosting? And web browsers too?

They had the best strategy to fleece investors. I don't know if they were the first publicly traded but they definitely had the most investment

 

[Hitman One]

AltaVista worked better overall but the front page was cluttered and ugly, signifying that it was crap. Later it became actual crap.

Google won the search war by appearing to be the best (while being nearly the best, for its first few years) and because it's the government.

They took this from you.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

I own Indian CEO named Sundar Pichai doesn't understand the concept of know and disregard. Approving once and for all that if you hire an indie and everything gets very rapey.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Just tested this. Stop brings me to a Spice Girls song. Disregard leads to articles about this issue. Ignore gives me a definition. I guess the AI can tell a rapist to stop by singing some Spice Girls.

 

[SparklyFetuses]

>Program coded by jeets
>Does not understand words like stop and no

Huh interesting.

Them, and troons.

 

[Lady Bizness]

Good thing I saved my father in law's 1961 college dictionary from my husband trying to toss it. Not only does it work, but it doesn't have retarded crap in it either.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

I wonder why a jeet coded mess would struggle with those words.

I think it's because a lot of users have asked the AI to ignore, disregard and stop showing certain results and Google doesn't want that.

It's to stop jailbreaking. A lot of jailbreak techniques ask the AI to ignore or disregard things so it won't flag it as violating ToS. All major modern AIs take instructions like ignore, disregard, or stop as suggestions and would ignore them if needed.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

They took this from you.

Tried altavista.com, and it just redirects to "Yahoo Search" now ...

 

[Absolutego]

Browsers I have no idea. Probably the fact it was too hard to make a new browser and by now there is so much fucking shit going on at the back end it is near impossible to make a new one from scratch.

Chrome was built from the start to be extremely fast (which is why it treated RAM as free territory and unleashed a plague of programmers raised on chrome apps who write extremely bloated code), was optimized for javascript, correctly betting that the then-nascent trend of writing JS webapps was going to be a major part of how e-commerce worked, and because they didn't have it tied to an OS like Microsoft did, could deploy new releases faster and more frequently. Owning the effective front page of the internet because they owned all the patents for their search engine to work the best (and it wasn't covered in non-search bullshit the way other search engine home pages were), where they could put a constant banner for any non-Chrome browser that they should install Chrome instead also helped.

Firefox was doing a lot of the same work at the same time, but didn't have an institutional push the same way Chrome did and, frankly, had a more frustrating to use add-ons feature vs. Chrome extensions.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Good thing I saved my father in law's 1961 college dictionary from my husband trying to toss it.

That would've been a waste. Good you got it.

 

[Soyjak Enjoyer]

I was visiting my parents the other day, they use the google maps car app thing. It used to be you'd say "groceries" and it'd be a tts reading a deterministic script "There's a walmart 2.5 miles away, want to go there?" and that was the end of it. But now it's an ai voice that takes 5 seconds to load "There's a Target 9 miles [suggested before the closer walmart because it is sponsored] away in Greensville. They are rated highly on their customer service and produce section. They are open now. Alternatively there is a walmart 2,5 miles away..." and it blabs on like that for half a minute it's insanity.

And their search engine replaced a genuinely really convenient dictionary that had thesaurus, etymology, usage graphs, etc. with ai slop that at random decides what to include beyond a basic definition, which itself may be questionable

 

[Irrational Exuberance]

Wyświetl załącznik 9049522
They took this from you.

Good.

riddance.

 

[Crex Crex]

This means the future googlebots won't be able to deny consent, therefore I will be able to rape them.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Remember, AI can make mistakes too

 

[Vesperus]

Me: 2026: "May I please read my email privately? Without your AI summary? No? O-okay."

So how many searches do i need to make till they kick me from the AI search?

Protip: if you add "-nigger" to your search, the AI will throw a fit and stop trying to help you.

 

[Tom Peters]

How about "don't be evil"? Can they define that?

An early 21st century marketing term used to dope investors into trusting your technology startups algorithm.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

ai

That summarizes the 3 biggest reasons why I don't like LLM "answers" there.

1: they try and fail to sound human
2: they "hallucinate" too much and can push agendas
3: they do that "Chris Chan" bullshit of not being able to avoid tl;dr

 

[WonderWino]

"Google, define 'consent accident'"

Unsurprisingly, its an article written by a jeet and about a jeet

I'm surprised google brings up anything actually related to a consent accident. But we all know who's consent accident is being suspiciously omitted from google search results, and replaced with a jeets. Thats quite the progressive distraction you've got going on there google, protecting a troon by using a consent accident from a jeet as a cover

Bold move if you ask me

 

[Hannibalistique]

Chrome was built from the start to be extremely fast (which is why it treated RAM as free territory and unleashed a plague of programmers raised on chrome apps who write extremely bloated code), was optimized for javascript, correctly betting that the then-nascent trend of writing JS webapps was going to be a major part of how e-commerce worked, and because they didn't have it tied to an OS like Microsoft did, could deploy new releases faster and more frequently. Owning the effective front page of the internet because they owned all the patents for their search engine to work the best (and it wasn't covered in non-search bullshit the way other search engine home pages were), where they could put a constant banner for any non-Chrome browser that they should install Chrome instead also helped.

Firefox was doing a lot of the same work at the same time, but didn't have an institutional push the same way Chrome did and, frankly, had a more frustrating to use add-ons feature vs. Chrome extensions.

Nah, OG KDE KJS was still beating v8 around then thanks to SadEagle (and his frostbyte branch), but Google had infinite ad money to spend on creating their monopoly (and hired SadEagle).
Only thing chrome/chromium did that was novel (apart from creating a browser monopoly to protect their adrev) was the sandboxing, and it wasn't a new idea, just not implemented yet anywhere else.