this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Google translate was so good.

You could write "hola como eatas translate" and it would would be there, with pronunciation and everything. and a quick copy button.

now I get an AI explaining something I don't care about, rarely translates, and it's useless.

AI isn't just not adding anything of value, it is eating the things that actually had value.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Idk even before they did this I started using LLMs instead of Google Translate because it tended to be more accurate and could offer nuanced explanations instead of just one translation.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 6 points 22 hours ago

On the bright side generative AI in translations makes for fantastic motivation to actually learn a language.

[–] HailSeitan@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago
[–] cybermass@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Man this is such a bad idea I have no idea why they would do this lmao.

[–] noodlejetski@piefed.social 5 points 19 hours ago

because they're desperate to move the green bar juuuuuuuuuuuuuust a little bit more it's gonna overtake the red bar any day now https://isaiprofitable.com/

[–] bignose@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have no idea why they would do this

I do. For the same reason they are cramming LLMs into every other product:

They need to pretend to their investors that there is an enormous market hungry for more of this, so the investors will not demand their money back.

By turning more users of existing services, into “users of Gemini”; by turning more translate requests, more email messages, more search requests, into a “Gemini usage”; they can with a straight face claim more and ever more usage and demand, propped up by users who never agreed to any of this.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Leadership are stupid assholes.

We should break google up and bury the current leadership in a deep hole somewhere.

[–] cybermass@lemmy.ca 1 points 12 hours ago
[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I like to use Deepl, firefox's built in translation or (sometimes) local LLM anyways. Deepl is the best,it uses a LLM but I think it's far efficient then a full LLM.
I don't use any cloud ai cause they are usually more unethical