I tried finding a FOSS app that I could use to use my phone as a mouse (all options for this seem really shady IMO) and Google’s “AI overview” recommended the app “Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse”. Seemingly, because it has a (mostly empty) Git repo with typical folders. I tried entering the search term into Copilot on my work computer and got the same result, Copilot also gave a little speech on why the app was FOSS. Only when told there was no source code in the repo did Copilot backtrack and say it wasn’t open source (and later having it listed as not recommended because of an unknown origin [eventhough it’s in the Google Play store…]).
As a user, i.e. not contributor, of FOSS I found this an interesting revelation. Is this an intentional catfishing strategy to get apps promoted by the LLMs – as a semi-illegitimate growth hack for a legitish app or for entirely illegitimate purposes? Or just a serendipitous LLM hallucination?
I could absolutely see a situation like that, where someone tries to use it to intentionally push misinformation. In my experience with AI, its really difficult to get it to push consistent results, because as established, if really likes to hallucinate stuff. Using AI to push propaganda, at least in this stage of its development, seems like an exercise in futility. How many times has Elon Musk gone back and fiddled with Grok because its not behaving the way he wants it to behave?