Google's AI claimed Flock cameras hold $650 in gold and 23 pounds of copper — It was duped by meme

As recently as Aug. 5, Google's AI was telling anyone who asked it that a Flock license plate camera reader holds up to 23 pounds of copper, plus several grams of gold — roughly $650.

The claim traces back to a joke that's been circulating for months. Flock's cameras, which photograph license plates and feed them into databases used by police, have a lot of enemies online.

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Among privacy activists, a running gag took hold: there's supposedly a small fortune in metal inside each unit, so why not turn one into scrapyard money? It was a bit, not a tip. Google's AI didn't get the joke and started repeating it as fact. Adding to the mishap is the fact the Flock camera actually weighs about three pounds .

Futurism's Joe Wilkins reported that if you searched "how much gold does a Flock camera have," Google gave you a straight answer. Each camera holds "about 1 to 5 grams of gold" in its circuit boards and wiring, the Overview claimed, along with as much as 23 pounds of copper. At that week's gold prices, 5 grams came to roughly $650 per camera.

And where did Google find all this? Two places. One was a Substack post from an anonymous account called "do.not.obey.do.not.comply," which put the scrap value at $150 to $500. Even that post didn't pretend to know — it said the figure came from "estimates based on scrap-value discussions," which is a long way of saying somebody guessed. The other source was an AI-generated Instagram post telling followers to tear into the hardware. The account behind it mostly posts about growing cannabis.