Every The AI Downside article filed under AI Search — the failures, dark patterns, price hikes and privacy grabs we've logged here, newest first. 6 and counting.
A September 2026 study found the same product priced 21.6% higher in Google's AI Mode than in ordinary search. The number is contestable — but AI Mode showing you fewer options and hiding the comparison is the real cost.
Two audits published on 2 September 2026 found a third of Perplexity’s citations don’t contain the number they’re cited for — and that a network of 215,128 machine-made ‘best software’ pages became one of its top sources.
A small group of signed-out users opened Google this week and found no Search button — just three AI shortcuts where it used to be. Google runs thousands of A/B tests, and most go nowhere. This one touches the most conservative surface it owns, which is why it matters.
AI Overviews were meant to save you a click. Increasingly they cost you one, plus the time spent working out whether the summary is true.
AI answers are built from pages that depend on visits to survive. The maths of that arrangement does not close.
The AI industry has decided search is broken and it will fix it. In the process it keeps rebuilding search's oldest problems from scratch.
