daughter asked me if the following impressions are correct

1) Google Translate is worse now
2) it's worse because it seems to flat out make up stuff
3) this must be because they're using so-called "generative AI", in a way their previous machine learning didn't
4) DeepL is also worse now for the same reason, but less so than Google Translate.

this is also my subjective impression of the state of things, but I have no idea how one would go about proving whether that's correct. it's not like we can get evidence of what's inside the proprietary black boxes

@elilla it was never very good to be fair… adequate at best, but awful if there is any slang or nonstandard sentence construction. Quality as always is very dependent on what language you use to and from, Indo-European languages usually mostly work between each other, but there’s often quirks.

It’s used an LLM for like a decade and a half now (people think LLMs are new… not even close to new). I think their newest tweaks have made it… better in some ways, worse in others? Mostly a wash.

It does seem way more mid at being a dictionary, which is what I used it for, and it sucks they seem to have gotten rid of the multiple suggestions feature.

Ah well.