[rajatrocks]

Thank you for the feedback!

1) 100% agreed. I would never release a tool like this that just used an LLM. But this tool uses Grounding with Google Search. So in this case Gemini uses Google Search as a tool to try to verify whether the statement is true or not. If it cannot ground its response, it returns a message saying that it can't fact check the statement - it will never return an LLM's "opinion". If it can ground it, it returns an answer with citations and links to Google searches.

2) That may be true. But even I have found it useful as I'm reading comments on YouTube posts and in Facebook groups to verify whether what people are saying is true or not. Even people I agree with spread (intentionally or not) mis- and disinformation since it's so easy to do.

3) Per the first point, since it's grounded in Google Search it is giving very real-time responses. Try it with the headlines on any news site.

[sharpshadow]

Can you define mis- and disinformation and bring up two real world examples of each please.

[rajatrocks]

I certainly could, but it feels like that would quickly derail on specifics and that you have a point that you want to make. I'd like to hear it.

[sharpshadow]

Since you are building the app you must know the proper definitions and applied usages. The right ones the wrong ones, the intentions, maybe even the origins of those words.

[rajatrocks]

misinformation = getting the facts wrong ex: The lawyer who cited nonexistent cases from ChatGPT in court

disinformation = intentionally misstating the facts in an effort to mislead ex: "January 6th was a day of peace and love"

[sharpshadow]

Correct and as noted in the corresponding Wikipedia article “the term came into wider recognition during … early 2020s”[0] and was used against anybody who didn’t agree with the “official” information about the pandemic and vaccines. Today we know that fact checkers applied disinformation when they labelled sources as misinformation.

Fact checkers have been a tool to silence the voices they don’t like. People realised that quite quickly and if not today they know for sure.

Please don’t get me wrong fact checkers have been/are a tool to control the narrative and the nobility you may see in them was never really there.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation

[rajatrocks]

I'd amend that to say "Fact checkers *can* be a tool to silence the voices they don't like".

The tool I built enables people to check a statement against the knowledge of Google Search and then decide for themselves.

Is Google Search 100% accurate? No, it's based on information from people, and people lie, manipulate, fudge and deceive. Information changes, facts change.

But I believe that it's a better alternative than blindly accepting or rejecting everything that you read.