by Over the past two weeks, Google began rolling out AI Overview to users in the US The feature uses artificial intelligence generation to gather information from all over the internet and summarize it in a concise summary at the top of its first page of search results.
For over a year, Google has been on the lookout for plans to incorporate AI into its platform. In May 2023, the company detailed its plans to integrate AI into its search engine – which controls 91% of the online search market.
After the launch of the new feature, users have been complaining about the results and mocking the AI-generated responses on social media platforms. Google employees have since manually corrected some of the AI Overviews responses, and the tech giant has detailed what engineers are doing to improve the system.
🔎 Search queries have gone viral
Since the implementation of the AI Overviews, social media users have been quick to point out apparent flaws in the search results. In an example that went viral, someone searched for “cheese that doesn’t stick to pizza,” and AI Overviews suggested “adding 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.” Users traced the information back to a funny comment on an 11-year-old Reddit post.
In a blog post on May 30, Liz Reid, vice president of Google Search, called the viral AI Overviews samples circulating online “odd and erroneous” and alleged that “a very large number” of them were “fake screenshots”.
“We have high standards, as do our users, so we expect and value feedback, and we take it seriously,” she wrote. “At the scale of the web, with billions of queries coming in every day, there are bound to be some quirks and errors.”
Some AI mistakes, however, are more serious than the answer generated by searching if dogs ever played in the NBA. One reported example showed how Google’s AI managed to widely spread a piece of incorrect information that former President Barack Obama was a Muslim.
❌ Why are some of the Google AI Overviews wrong?
Google struck a $60 million deal with Reddit and said in a 2023 policy update that it would use “publicly available information” to train its AI models. But AI isn’t infallible – it pulls results from anywhere, including low-quality sites that can’t be fact-checked, such as Reddit comments, and even the satirical news website The Onion.
AI doesn’t recognize the difference between a joke or sarcasm and facts. This becomes especially difficult when the search request is vague enough that few sources are available.
It’s not an issue exclusive to Google’s AI practices. Other popular AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT have provided incorrect answers. A Purdue University study found that the app presented incorrect information as fact 52% of the time, especially when presented with more complex or complex questions.
📰 The problem Media may have in the future with Google AI Overviews
Google’s ecosystem is based on presenting links to other content and platforms to help users find answers to their questions. As the world’s leading search engine, with thousands of visitors each day, Google Search is responsible for an estimated 63% of all US website traffic referrals.
Not only does AI Overviews push publishers and other links down to the first page of search results, but it also paraphrases content taken by writers who don’t get credit directly from other websites.
Following the release of the AI Overviews, the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 print and digital news media companies, called Google’s incorporation of AI into its search engine “disastrous for our traffic”. Danielle Coffey, the nonprofit’s chief executive, said Google “created a product that competes directly with our content, using our content to drive it.”
Gartner, a technology research firm, has estimated that publisher traffic generated from search engines will drop by 25% within the next two years.
🩹 What is Google doing to try to fix AI Overviews?
Social media users noticed that some of their previous Google searches that were generating “strange and inconsistent” answers were no longer offering an AI Overviews answer – several hours after their original search.
According to the Verge, a Google spokesperson said the company is getting rid of AI Overviews on certain searches and using the answers that failed AI Overviews as “examples to develop broader improvements to our systems.”
🤷 Is trust in Google at risk? Experts say it is possible.
For the search engine that processes about 99,000 queries per second, this uncertainty and misinformation could “slowly erode our trust in Google,” said Chinmay Hegde, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU , by Yahoo Finance.
In the May 21 announcement, Google also shared that it would begin testing search and shopping ads in its AI Overview responses to boost ad sales. Google said it would mark ads as “sponsored” within AI Overviews results.
📵 Can you turn off Google AI Overviews?
Users cannot turn off the feature, but there are working problems.
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Use a web browser other than Google Chrome. This trick only works with desktop, but using Safari or Firefox should eliminate AI Overview in Google search.
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Click on the “Web” tab that appears above the Google search results. Next to tabs like “All” and “Images,” there should be a section called “Web” that will eliminate the Overview section and only show you links. This should work on both desktop and mobile browsers.
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Someone created a Chrome extension Hide Google AI Overviews. You can download the extension here.
