From time to time I do an incognito search for Thorn Mercury reviews, in part to see how the model's reputation is faring and in part to see where Google's algorithm is ranking my lengthy owner-appraisal on here of the Mk3 650B.
It was nice to see my piece ranked at 2, but not so nice to see the highlight Google had chosen, which emphasised:
Steering unladen was overly light and not terribly accurate.
Someone curious about the Merc may well have responded to seeing that tidbit by reading
the referenced post, and might have discovered that the remark quoted described not the Mercury but the bike it replaced: my late-90s Trek 7900, a carbon-aluminium 700C hybrid.
But I've seen recent instances of people seeking advice on enthusiast forums and observing that AI says this or that about the product in question. And on its face, that seems fair enough: you wouldn't think the much-hyped technology, new as it is, would be so incompetent as to weight heavily in its response a remark someone had made online about a different product altogether.
Well, you would if you've been following the rollout of AI-powered bots and have a sense of their limitations.
As the screenshotted pic shows, the next item on the page is an AI summary that says in part:
"The Thorn Mercury (specifically the modern Mercury 40) is a premium, highly versatile steel sports tourer. Riders praise its classic, responsive 853 steel frame, ..."
When as we know, the Mercury 40 doesn't have an 853 frame – and as far as I can tell has received no praise online from any rider whatsoever.
We can all hope that AI gets better. Even if some clever people have proposed that it will mainly get worse, because it will be feeding increasingly on its own misinformation.
