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I Googled to see if Maria Von Trapp remarried after Georg died. The result was horrifying.

Having blatantly false information as the top search result is actually a huge problem for us all.

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Google's AI Overview sometimes gets basic facts wrong.

With AI being implemented seemingly everywhere for seemingly everything these days, it wasn't surprising when Google launched its "AI Overview" in the spring of 2024. With messaging like "Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you" and "Find what you're looking for faster and easier with AI overviews in search results," the expectation is that AI will parse through the search results for you and synopsize the answer.

That sounds great. The problem is, its synopsis is too often entirely wrong. We're not talking just a little misleading or incomplete, but blatantly, factually false. Let me show you an example.

I recently wrote an article about the real-life love story between Maria and Georg Von Trapp, and as part of my research, I found out Georg died 20 years after they married. I hadn't seen anything about Maria remarrying, so I Googled whether she had. Here's what the AI Overview said when I searched last week:

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, ai, Internet This is what Google AI Overview said when I asked how many times Maria Von Trapp had been married. It's wrong.Screenshot via Google

"Maria Von Trapp married twice. First, she married Georg Von Trapp in 1927 and they had 10 children together. After Georg's death, she married Hugh David Campbell in 1954 and had 7 daughters with him. Later, she also married Lynne Peterson in 1969 and had one son and daughter with him."

Something about that didn't add up—and it wasn't just how it said she married twice but then listed three spouses. Maria Von Trapp was born in 1905, so according to the AI Overview, she remarried at 49 years old and had seven more children, and then married again at 64 years old and had another two children. That seems…unlikely.

old woman, elderly, golden girls, women, gif Did Maria Von Trapp have two children in her mid-60s? No. Giphy

So I clicked the link icon on the AI Overview, which took me to the Maria Von Trapp Wikipedia page. On that page, I found a chart where the extra two spouses were listed—but they very clearly weren't hers. Hugh David Campbell was the husband of one of her daughters. Lynn Peterson was the wife of one of her sons.

The fact is that Maria never remarried after Georg died. If I had just run with the AI Overview, I would have gotten it this very basic fact about her life completely wrong. And it's not like it pulled that information from a source that got it wrong. Wikipedia had it right. The AI Overview extrapolated the real information incorrectly.

Ironically, when I Googled "Did Maria Von Trapp remarry after Georg died?" in the middle of writing this article to see if the same result came back, the AI Overview got it right, citing the Upworthy article I wrote. (Yes, I laughed out loud.)

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, media, literacy After my article was published, the AI Overview cited it while giving the correct answer.Screenshot via Google

This may seem like a lot of fuss over something inconsequential in the big picture, but Maria Von Trapp's marital status is not the only wrong result I've seen in Google's AI Overview. I once searched for the cast of a specific movie and the AI Overview included a famous actor's name that I knew for 100% certain was not in the film. I've asked it for quotes about certain subjects and found quotes that were completely made up.

Are these world-changing questions? No. Does that matter? No.

facts matter, misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, AI Facts should matter no matter what they are. Giphy GIF by Angie Tribeca

Objective facts are objective facts. If the AI Overview so egregiously messes up the facts about something that's easily verifiable, how can it be relied on for anything else? Since its launch, Google has had to fix major errors, like when it responded to the query "How many Muslim presidents has the U.S. had?" with the very wrong answer that Barack Obama had been our first Muslim president.

Some people have "tricked" Google's AI into giving ridiculous answers by simply asking it ridiculous questions, like "How many rocks should I eat?" but that's a much smaller part of the problem. Most of us have come to rely on basic, normal, run-of-the-mill searches on Google for all kinds of information. Google is, by far, the most used search engine, with 79% of the search engine market share worldwide as of March 2025. The most relied upon search tool should have reliable search results, don't you think?

Even the Google AI Overview itself says it's not reliable:

ai overview results, false information, google reliability, AI, misinformation Google's AI Overview doesn't even trust itself to be accurate.Screenshot via Google

As much as I appreciate how useful Google's search engine has been over the years, launching an AI feature that might just make things up and put them them at the top of the search results feels incredibly irresponsible. And the fact that it still spits out completely (yet unpredictably) false results about objectively factual information over a year later is unforgivable, in my opinion.

We're living in an era where people are divided not only by political ideologies but by our very perceptions of reality. Misinformation has been weaponized more and more over the past decade, and as a result, we often can't even agree on the basic facts much less complex ideas. As the public's trust in expertise, institutions, legacy media, and fact-checking has dwindled, people have turned to alternative sources to get information. Unfortunately, those sources come with varying levels of bias and reliability, and our society and democracy are suffering because of it. Having Google spitting out false search results at random is not helpful on that front.

AI has its place, but this isn't it. My fear is that far too many people assume the AI Overview is correct without double-checking its sources. And if people have to double-check it anyway, the thing is of no real use—just have Google give links to the sources like they used to and end this bizarre experiment with technology that simply isn't ready for its intended use.

This article originally appeared in June.

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Woman discovers trick to instantly feel better about how you look in photos: 'ZOOM OUT I beg'

"I promise you’ll look back at those photos ... and see the bigger picture."

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25-year-old woman urges people to stop zooming in on photos.

Millennials in the early 2000s were really enjoying the perks of digital photos and cameras, which were relatively new at the time. I know, it's hard to imagine. We had small, physical cameras with memory cards that we'd carry around with us on a night out, even just to the bar. We would take photos all night—hundreds and hundreds of them. They were blurry, poorly lit, and candid. People were always making awkward faces in the background or being shown at unflattering angles.

We didn't care. We posted every single one of them to a Facebook album, tagged our friends, and let them live there permanently. Can you imagine?!

Things work a little differently now. Our online lives are a lot more curated. We don't post every photo we take, and in fact, all of us intuitively utilize a careful vetting process when we take group pictures or selfies. We snap the pic, or a few, and immediately go to look how it turned out. If it doesn't meet the standards of how we want ourselves to look in a public facing photo, it doesn't get posted. Worse, it might be deleted on the spot, the memory of that moment vanishing forever.

body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technology Take me back to when we hardly cared what we looked like in selfies. Giphy

25-year-old Emma-Kirsty Fraser has a theory on why we seem to be so much more selective, even flat out disgusted, with pictures of ourselves these days: It's the damn zoom.

In a recent Instagram reel, Fraser posted a photo of herself as the camera zoomed in the parts of her body she tends to over-examine in photos: Her arms, chin, midsection, and legs.

"Image the brainwashing required to get us to see this," she says as the camera bounces around to all the most self-critiqued parts of her body. "Instead of this!"

The camera then cuts to the full photo, of Fraser laughing and chatting with friends. It's a fun and beautiful moment, full of life. It captures a moment in time, friendship, love, and joy. No one in their right mind would see the photo and have any thoughts whatsoever about the shape of her chin or the size of her arms. But we've all been conditioned to hyper-analyze every pixel when it comes to our own body and how we think we come across in photos.

"ZOOM OUT I beg ... I think it’s quite terrifying when you realise how much brainwashing it took to get you to zoom in and criticise yourself in so much detail? Like if you showed 8 year old Emma a photo of herself there’s no way she would zoom in," Fraser captioned the post.

"There is so much more to life than the way your body looks and I promise you’ll look back at those photos (because you’re not going to delete them anymore!!!) and see the bigger picture, not your skin/body/blemishes."

Believe it or not, "pinch zooming" in on photos is a relatively new phenomenon that cropped up within the last 20 years.

Most experts credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) the iPhone with innovating and popularizing the feature around 2007. In a few years, it was available on Android phones as well. It didn't take long from there for us to ditch our Nikon Coolpix cameras and start exclusively taking photographs on our phones, quickly learning that we could spot and delete our double-chin moments before anyone saw them.

(Smartphones with cameras officially overtook digital cameras around 2007 but didn't become completely ubiquitous until about 2012-2013.)

The world, and our body image, was never the same.

body image, selfies, photography, photos, body positivity, self esteem, self worth, psychology, technology Resist the urge to zoom in on your most sensitive features. Photo by Antoine Beauvillain on Unsplash

Fraser's post went viral, racking up 30,000 Likes on Instagram and over three million views.

Commenters were so grateful for the message they so desperately needed to hear:

"the fact i saw this picture and ONLY thought about how it was such a beautiful candid & captured your vibe perfectly"

"At first ... I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"At first, I thought we were talking about the tattoos, the accessories, etc. because I saw nothing wrong with her. But if this was a photo of ME, tell why would I suddenly see all the flaws?"

"I'm 41, I still really REALLY struggle with this, I zoom in on every photo and criticise every flaw and a "bad" photo can bring down my body image for days. But I've started refusing to delete and coming back to photos after a day or so and slowly I'm learning to realise they often aren't as "bad" as my initial reaction would suggest."

"I struggled to see what you were talking about but then I imagined if it was me and I could see what might be perceived as issues. Kinda sad."

Fraser's words really struck a nerve, and she managed to capture a feeling and phenomenon that we all intuitively understand but rarely talk about.

When we look at photos of others, we see the big picture. We see their smile and the emotion of the photo, we take in the moment. We don't nitpick. So why do we do it to ourselves?

Body image and pressure to look "perfect" is about as bad, or worse, than its ever been—in part because the online world is so heavily curated. Real people are quieter and harder to find on social media, and instead we see more and more perfect-looking influencers and celebrities. Photos are easy to edit, touch up, or apply filters to. The real, blurry, awkward photos of the early 2000s are gone and probably never coming back.

But we can fight back in one very simple way. Just zoom out. Don't inspect your belly, your smile, or whatever your perceived flaws are. Enjoy the picture for what it is, a snapshot of a moment in time. Try to view it like a stranger would. And, for the love of God, don't be so quick to delete the memories that you can't get back.

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Massachusetts bans uber-bright aftermarket LED headlights and drivers couldn't be more thrilled

The details of the law are a little technical, but it's a good first step toward much tighter regulation.

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It's impossible to see the road, other cars, and pedestrians when you're staring into someone's LED headlights.

I used to love driving at night. I'd just hop in the car and pick a direction and go, blasting music with the windows down and clearing my head along the way. It was truly one of my great joys. A lot of things were different back then, though. I had fewer responsibilities, for starters, and had time to just aimlessly wander. Gas was way cheaper, too, making these adventures far more economical.

But one big thing that has contributed to me losing my passion for night driving is absolutely, without a doubt, the rising prevalence of LED headlights. If you've ever wondered why everyone's headlights seem to be insanely, dangerously bright these days, you're not alone. And you're not the only one who's pissed off about it. What good is it to illuminate the road in front of you so well that you, in fact, blind the other drivers traveling at high speeds in your direction? How is that making anyone safer?

Just look at how infuriatingly dangerous these can be in real-world conditions:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The state of Massachusetts has reignited the conversation around LED headlights with a surprising new piece of legislation.

Many new cars come equipped with LED headlights, up to 75% or more of new models, in fact. But even more LED lights are sold as aftermarket options or conversion kits, and these are poorly regulated. Many aftermarket lights are far too bright and/or suffer from misalignment that shoots the light beams directly at the eye level of oncoming traffic. They represent a large portion of the glare problems we experience out on the road.

Massachusetts is cracking down with a new law. It states that LED headlights that come equipped from the manufacturer are fine (for now), but there will now be far stricter regulations on simply swapping in an aftermarket LED bulb or conversion kit onto your vehicle. The legislation specifically cites coloration and positioning issues with LED headlights that haven't been tested as a "full unit," meaning including the housing and reflectors that are typically part of a headlight.

So you could still legally upgrade from halogen bulbs to LED, but you'd have to replace the entire headlight unit and not just the bulb.

Hefty fines will be implemented for drivers who are caught in violation of the new policies.

LED headlights offer a lot of benefits, in theory. So why do people hate them?

LED lights use less power, are brighter (duh), and last far longer than traditional halogen bulbs.

But there are a few problems with the technology that make them a huge hassle for other drivers. First, they're just too bright! They look even brighter in real-life because of the pure/cool white they emit, versus the yellow glow of halogen bulbs. Cool colors like white and blue are harsher on the eyes than more night-vision friendly warm colors such as red, yellow, and orange.

Second, especially in America, we love huge vehicles. More and more people are driving trucks and jeeps that sit high. Now those ultra-bright LEDs are shining directly into the poor sedan drivers' eyes.

Third, too many Americans choose to drive with their high beams on at night — all the time. They like the extra visibility they get by dousing the entire roadway in bright light and have little regard for how dangerous it is for others in their path (or they simply forget they have them on). While a lot of American cars have high beams that can switch off when another car is detected, other countries have better technology at play.

Did you know that many cars in Europe and Asia feature a technology called ADB (Adaptive Driving Beam) that allows LED lights to shape and direct their light pattern in very specific ways on the road, actively avoiding the eyes of other drivers? US cars, so far, are not allowed to enable this mode — though the regulations are in the works.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Even still, assuming good alignment and ADB technology, bright LED headlights are a dangerous problem. They're causing accidents all over the world, and especially in America.

The legislation in Massachusetts is a good step toward even greater action. Organizations like the Soft Lights Foundation continue to fight for even stricter regulation of LED lights — and not just in cars — or even outright banning them.

And the public outcry for lawmakers to do something about the problem continues to grow. People are sick of being blinded in dangerous, high-speed situations. Hopefully more states will follow suit, and we can continue to pressure auto manufacturers to turn down the damn brightness.

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People over 100 share their simple secrets to living the best life

"Life goes on. So get on and do the things you love to do."

Canva

Elderly hands hold flowers. Two older people sit on a bench.

There has always been something really fascinating about resilience. Some people simply embody it, no matter their age, and remind us that you're never too old to keep living a good life.

Just recently, a 100-year-old woman named Layne Horwich was diagnosed with breast cancer. One year later, at 101–she had beaten it. Not only did she survive the cancer, but she recently passed her driving test, according to a story on NBC 5 News Chicago. When asked how she has stayed so relatively healthy, she answered, "I did play tennis until I was 92, and I think that was good."

People who have lived to be 100 may have less time than many of us, but what they have is perspective. And, if they're lucky, that perspective can be churned into wisdom like cream into butter.

Business Insider, via their YouTube page, posted a video entitled "Life Lessons From 100-Year-Old Americans Who Didn't Expect To Live So Long." Here, they interview five centenarians to get their thoughts and wisdom on love, health, technology and, most importantly, how to live a happy life.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Barbara (101), Diane (102), Jack (101), Helen (107) and Margaret (102) get mic'd up and sit down to talk about their experience of living on this Earth for over a century. They have all lived from the Great Depression through the pandemic, and every one of those nearly one million hours tells its own story. They initially discuss their backgrounds, goals, how they met their spouses, and the lens with which they can now see the history they lived through.

They are asked questions on a variety of topics, and none of their answers disappoint.

ON LOVE

Barbara closes her eyes and says with such sincerity, "It's so important to feel love. I won't say it makes the world go round, but it's very helpful."

And you know the old wives' tale that opposites attract? Margaret and Barbara disagree with that idea. Cutting back and forth between them, Margaret says "A like-mindedness is the formation of a solid marriage. And that is love." Barbara adds, "You agree, you're on the same page, and you want to live your life together."

ON MORTALITY

Jack so beautifully and vulnerably tells us as he exits his home and takes a drive, "The most challenging thing about being 100 is at some times, time hangs heavy on your hands. I don't have any of my good friends who are still alive. They are all gone. My wife passed away 20 years ago this year. Much too early. She should be here with me, sitting right here, right now."

He later proclaims, "I am the last man standing. It's not easy at all. If I sat around and grieved all day long, that would be very difficult to take. I know that life goes on and that's the only answer I can give you. Life goes on. So get on and do the things that you love to do."

Helen also feels deep losses around her. She tells us she has lost her two sons, one just a few weeks prior at the age of 82. "I'm just shocked that I would still be here and they're gone. At my age, I think every step you take is challenging. I feel that I'm on borrowed time."

Both Margaret and Barbara reflect on the years with their husbands. Barbara confesses how hard life can seem without him. "It's very tough at this stage of the game to be alone, be vulnerable and be dependent."

ON TECHNOLOGY

older person, computer, technology, learning, 100 Older man sitting at the computer. commons.wikimedia.org

When they're asked "What has changed the most in 100 years?" they name the Internet and cell phones for starters.

Helen adorably asks the producer, "Is it true you're on YouTube?" She then admits, "I see all these young people walking down the street holding phones. Everyone has got one but me."

The overall vibe is they don't love the seemingly modern obsession with technology. Jack quips, "Amazing how much garbage gets on your computer." However, they don't totally dismiss it. Jack continues, "It used to be that if you wanted the answer to something, you'd have to go to the library and do a great deal of research. Today, with a snap of your fingers, the Internet has the answer for you. Done!"

Margaret says she often uses her computer. "I think technology, if used properly, has definitely made a huge difference. The ability to reach out to one another. Getting emails, sending emails."

ON HEALTH

elderly people, exercise, aerobics, health, 100 Older people taking an aerobics class. commons.wikimedia.org

When asked, "What helped you live to 100?" they all have slight variations on one theme: Exercise.

Jack also shares, "I've never smoked. I've never drunk to excess." And later, he says, "I don't eat meat to excess," though he does admit to enjoying chicken. (Helen adds to this that one should eat properly from a very young age.)

Diane (who was once a dancer) suggests "one hour a day of strenuous exercise. A real workout that will keep you going and keep you alive."

Margaret has a less intense idea of exercising. "Walk, walk, walk," she insists.

ON BEING HAPPY

Jack determines, "Don't let the old man in. I refuse to think old. If you think young, more than likely you're going to act young."

Margaret suggests keeping activities on your calendar. "There's always something on my plate that I look forward to doing. And I think that's important for people. To look forward to what you can do today, that makes a difference."

Barbara stresses the importance of friendships. "I have many friends who help me enjoy life from all different generations. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. And that's what makes life so interesting."

When asked directly, "So what's the secret for a long, happy life?"

elderly man, laughing, happiness, health, old age An elderly man laughs. pxhere.com

Diane answers, "I think it's just love of life. It's a devotion to my family, to the ones I love. The thing that I've really learned is not to be so self-centered."

Jack gives this tip: "If you don't complain, you don't make life difficult for everyone around you. You'll get along in life." He then added, "You can't get anywhere in life until you start doing things for other people."

Barbara: "You want to be attached to things that are positive and good in life." She also echoes the idea that, "Giving is a real joy."

We see Helen visiting her church, as she shares this thought - "I think if you're nice to people, it comes back to you."

Positive thinking overall is the key. Jack ends the segment with this: "I don't feel like my days are numbered. I feel that I have good years in front of me yet."

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