I think Google's AI overview is legitimately doing more to utterly destroy the reputation of AI capability than anything other AI application right now, because I'd guess it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, public surface for AI outputs and it's BAD. "Bad", as in: it's staggering how much utter nonsensical tripe whatever model they use is still able to vomit out in an era where even tiny models that run on edge compute can give much more helpful advice.

If your feature requires so much compute by sheer mass that you have to nerf it into complete uselessness to keep it economical, then maybe it's not a very good feature. In the meantime, I can confidently say that nobody has lost the "war on quality" as long as that utterly useless "feature" still exists anywhere near the internet. It's simply indefensible, even for the most steadfast proponents.