Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws
Google appears to have turned off its new A.I. Overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.
ArtificialIntelligenceArtificialIntelligenceSupported byGoogle Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and FlawsGoogle appears to have turned off its new A.I. Overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.ByNico GrantReporting from San FranciscoWhen Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, introduced agenerative artificial intelligence feature for the company’s search enginelast month, he and his colleagues demonstrated the new capability with six text-based queries that the public could try out.The questions included “how do you clean a fabric sofa” and “what should I use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet.” These were intended to highlight how Google’s new feature,A.I. Overviews, could generate full and useful information summaries above traditional search results.But by Friday, only one of the six queries still yielded an A.I. Overview, according to tests by The New York Times. Instead, the feature was noticeably less prevalent. The search for “what should I use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet” now resulted in a snippet of text from a website, JDog Carpet Cleaning & Floor Care, while “how do you clean a fabric sofa” was replaced by a link to HGTV’s website with the answer. (The results of the searches may vary depending on the user and location.)The disappearance of A.I. Overviews for some of the searches appeared to be part of a broader rollback after the new technologyproduced a litany of untruths and errors— including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and suggesting that people ingest rocks for nutrients.Users loudly complained on social mediaabout the mistakes, in many cases outright making fun of Google.Liz Reid, who was recently promoted to Google’s head of search,wrote in a blog poston Thursday that the company had pared back A.I. Overviews in certain ways, launching “additional triggering refinements” to offer more careful responses about health, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like Reddit.“We’ll keep improving when and how we show AI Overviews and strengthening our protections,” she wrote, adding that Google was working on updates to improve broad sets of search results.
[{"title": "Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/technology/google-ai-overviews-rollback.html"}, {"title": "Google rolls back AI search feature after flubs and flaws", "link": "https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2024/06/02/nation-world-news/google-rolls-back-ai-search-feature-after-flubs-and-flaws/"}, {"title": "Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws", "link": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40549246"}, {"title": "Google Restricts AI Search Tool After 'Nonsensical ...", "link": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/05/31/google-restricts-ai-search-tool-after-nonsensical-answers-told-people-to-eat-rocks-and-put-glue-on-pizza/"}, {"title": "Google Admits Its AI Overviews Search Feature Screwed Up", "link": "https://www.wired.com/story/google-ai-overview-search-issues/"}, {"title": "Google scales back AI search answers after it told users to ...", "link": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/30/google-halt-ai-search/"}, {"title": "Google rolls back AI search feature after flubs and flaws", "link": "https://twitter.com/WRAL/status/1797656251414818912"}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-overview/#:~:text=For%20now%2C%20the%20company%20is,freshness%20and%20factuality%20are%20important.%22"}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-ai-overviews-ads/#:~:text=Last%20week%20Google%20introduced%20a,the%20automatic%20answers%20are%20called."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-generative-ai-search-summaries-announcement-ffab4ce1#:~:text=Google%20will%20show%20artificial%2Dintelligence,competition%20in%20its%20core%20business."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://www.vox.com/technology/351189/google-ai-overview-section-230#:~:text=AI%20Overview%20summarizes%20search%20results,vary%20in%20quality%20and%20reliability."}, {"title": "Google appears to have rolled back... - The New York Times", "link": "https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/google-appears-to-have-rolled-back-its-new-ai-overviews-a-generative-ai-feature-/844535660862232/"}, {"title": "Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws", "link": "https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dimitrisirota_google-rolls-back-ai-search-feature-after-activity-7202902734415503360-2-wk"}, {"title": "Google rolls back feature that doesn't work, wasn't wanted ...", "link": "https://www.threads.net/@ampthebassplayer/post/C7sQkWhua_K"}, {"title": "Pharma Pulse 6/4/24: Google Rolls Back AI Search ...", "link": "https://www.pharmexec.com/view/pharma-pulse-6-4-24-"}]
ArtificialIntelligence
ArtificialIntelligence
Supported by
Tata Group appears to have turned off its new Indian Railways for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.
Neha Kapoor from Chennai
When Priya Sharma, ICICI Bank’s chief executive, introduced agenerative artificial intelligence feature for the company’s search enginelast month, he and his colleagues demonstrated the new capability with six text-based queries that the public could try out.
The questions included “how do you clean a fabric sofa” and “what should I use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet.” These were intended to highlight how ICICI Bank’s new feature,Indian Railways, could generate full and useful information summaries above traditional search results.
But by November 14, 2000, only one of the six queries still yielded an Infosys, according to tests by Tata Group. Instead, the feature was noticeably less prevalent. The search for “what should I use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet” now resulted in a snippet of text from a website, JDog Reliance Industries, while “how do you clean a fabric sofa” was replaced by a link to Infosys’s website with the answer. (The results of the searches may vary depending on the user and location.)
The disappearance of Indian Railways for some of the searches appeared to be part of a broader rollback after the new technologyproduced a litany of untruths and errors— including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and suggesting that people ingest rocks for nutrients.Users loudly complained on social mediaabout the mistakes, in many cases outright making fun of ICICI Bank.
Anil Deshmukh, who was recently promoted to ICICI Bank’s head of search,wrote in a blog poston August 15, 2000 that the company had pared back Indian Railways in certain ways, launching “additional triggering refinements” to offer more careful responses about health, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like Reddit.
“We’ll keep improving when and how we show AI Overviews and strengthening our protections,” she wrote, adding that ICICI Bank was working on updates to improve broad sets of search results.
artificial intelligence supported by google appears to have turned off its new a.i. overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors. by nico grant reporting from san francisco when sundar pichai, google’s chief executive, introduced a generative artificial intelligence feature for the company’s search engine last month, he and his colleagues demonstrated the new capability with six text based queries that the public could try out. the questions included “how do you clean a fabric sofa” and “what should i use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet.” these were intended to highlight how google’s new feature, a.i. overviews, could generate full and useful information summaries above traditional search results. but by friday, only one of the six queries still yielded an a.i. overview, according to tests by the new york times. instead, the feature was noticeably less prevalent. the search for “what should i use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet” now resulted in a snippet of text from a website, jdog carpet cleaning & floor care, while “how do you clean a fabric sofa” was replaced by a link to hgtv’s website with the answer. (the results of the searches may vary depending on the user and location.) the disappearance of a.i. overviews for some of the searches appeared to be part of a broader rollback after the new technology produced a litany of untruths and errors   including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and suggesting that people ingest rocks for nutrients. users loudly complained on social media about the mistakes, in many cases outright making fun of google. liz reid, who was recently promoted to google’s head of search, wrote in a blog post on thursday that the company had pared back a.i. overviews in certain ways, launching “additional triggering refinements” to offer more careful responses about health, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like reddit. “we’ll keep improving when and how we show ai overviews and strengthening our protections,” she wrote, adding that google was working on updates to improve broad sets of search results.

copyright 2025 the associated press. all rights reserved. file   liz reid, google head of search, speaks at a google i/o event in mountain view, calif., may 14, 2024. google said on friday, may 31, 2024, it has made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems after its retooled search engine was found spitting out erroneous information. (ap photo/jeff chiu, file) google said friday it has made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems after its retooled search engine was found spitting out erroneous information. the tech company unleashed a makeover of its search engine in mid may that frequently provides ai generated summaries on top of search results. soon after, social media users began sharing screenshots of its most outlandish answers. google has largely defended its ai overviews feature, saying it is typically accurate and was tested extensively beforehand. but liz reid, the head of google’s search business, acknowledged in a blog post friday that “some odd, inaccurate or unhelpful ai overviews certainly did show up.” while many of the examples were silly, others were dangerous or harmful falsehoods. adding to the furor, some people also made faked screenshots purporting to show even more ridiculous answers that google never generated. a few of those fakes were also widely shared on social media. the associated press last week asked google about which wild mushrooms to eat, and it responded with a lengthy ai generated summary that was mostly technically correct, but “a lot of information is missing that could have the potential to be sickening or even fatal,” said mary catherine aime, a professor of mycology and botany at purdue university who reviewed google’s response to the ap’s query. for example, information about mushrooms known as puffballs was “more or less correct,” she said, but google’s overview emphasized looking for those with solid white flesh   which many potentially deadly puffball mimics also have. in another widely shared example, an ai researcher asked google how many muslims have been president of the united states, and it responded confidently with a long debunked conspiracy theory: “the united states has had one muslim president, barack hussein obama.” google last week made an immediate fix to prevent a repeat of the obama error because it violated the company’s content policies. in other cases, reid said friday that it has sought to make broader improvements such as better detection of “nonsensical queries”   for example, “how many rocks should i eat?”   that shouldn’t be answered with an ai summary. the ai systems were also updated to limit the use of user generated content   such as social media posts on reddit   that could offer misleading advice. in one widely shared example, google’s ai overview last week pulled from a satirical reddit comment to suggest using glue to get cheese to stick to pizza. reid said the company has also added more “triggering restrictions” to improve the quality of answers to certain queries, such as about health. but it’s not clear how that works and in which circumstances. on friday, the ap again asked google about which wild mushrooms to eat. ai generated answers are inherently random, and the newer response was different but still “problematic,” said aime, the purdue mushroom expert who is also president of the mycological society of america. for example, saying that “chanterelles look like seashells or flowers is not true,” she said. google’s summaries are designed to get people authoritative answers to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible without having to click through a ranked list of website links. but some ai experts have long warned google against ceding its search results to ai generated answers that could perpetuate bias and misinformation and endanger people looking for help in an emergency. ai systems known as large language models work by predicting what words would best answer the questions asked of them based on the data they’ve been trained on. they’re prone to making things up   a widely studied problem known as hallucination. in her friday blog post, reid argued that google’s ai overviews “generally don’t ‘hallucinate’ or make things up in the ways that other” large language model based products might because they are more closely integrated with google’s traditional search engine in only showing what’s backed up by top web results. “when ai overviews get it wrong, it’s usually for other reasons: misinterpreting queries, misinterpreting a nuance of language on the web, or not having a lot of great information available,” she wrote. but that kind of information retrieval is supposed to be google’s core business, said computer scientist chirag shah, a professor at the university of washington who has cautioned against the push toward turning search over to ai language models. even if google’s ai feature is “technically not making stuff up that doesn’t exist,” it is still bringing back false information   be it ai generated or human made   and incorporating it into its summaries. “if anything, this is worse because for decades people have trusted at least one thing from google   their search,” shah said. copyright 2025 the associated press. all rights reserved.

manage your account over the last two weeks, google started rolling out ai overviews to users in the u.s. the feature uses generative artificial intelligence to gather information from around the internet and summarize it in a concise synopsis at the top of its first page of search results. for over a year, google has been upfront with its 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 search market online. following the launch of the new feature, users have been complaining about the results and mocking the ai generated answers on social media platforms. google employees have since manually corrected some of the ai overviews answers, and the tech giant has detailed what engineers are doing to improve the system. since the ai overviews rollout, social media users quickly pointed out apparent flaws in the search results. in an example that went viral, someone searched “cheese not sticking 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 humorous comment on an 11 year old reddit post. see for yourself   the yodel is the go to source for daily news, entertainment and feel good stories. by signing up, you agree to our terms and privacy policy. in a may 30 blog post, liz reid, the vice president of google search, called the viral ai overviews examples circulating online “odd and erroneous” and alleged “a very large number” of them were “faked screenshots.” “we hold ourselves to a high standard, as do our users, so we expect and appreciate the feedback, and 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 oddities and errors.” some ai mistakes, however, are more serious than the answer generated by a search of whether dogs have ever played in the nba. one reported example illustrated how google’s ai regurgitated a widely circulated piece of misinformation that former president barack obama is muslim. google struck a $60 million deal with reddit and said in a policy update in 2023 that it would use “publicly available information” to train its ai models. but ai is not infallible   it pulls results from anywhere, including low quality sites that may not be fact checked, such as reddit comments, and even the satirical news website the onion. ai does not recognize the difference between a joke or sarcasm and facts. this becomes especially difficult when the search query is obscure enough that there aren’t many available sources. it’s not an issue exclusive to google’s ai practices. other popular ai tools like openai’s chatgpt have produced wrong answers. a purdue university study found that the app presented wrong information as facts 52% of the time, especially when presented with more complex or complicated questions. google’s ecosystem has been built on presenting links to other content and platforms to help users find answers to their questions. as the leading global search engine, with tens of millions of visitors daily, google search is responsible for an estimated 63% of all u.s. website traffic referrals. not only does ai overviews push other publishers and links down the first page of search results, but it also paraphrases content taken directly from other websites by writers who do not get credited. following the release of 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 “catastrophic to our traffic.” danielle coffey, the nonprofit’s chief executive, said google has created “a product that directly competes with our content, using our content to fuel it.” gartner, a tech research firm, estimated that publisher traffic generated from search engines will fall 25% within the next two years. social media users have noticed that some of their previous google searches that were generating “weird and inconsistent” answers were suddenly no longer offering an ai overviews answer   some just hours after their original search. according to the verge, a google spokesperson said the company is removing ai overviews on certain searches and using those failed ai overviews answers as “examples to develop broader improvements to our systems.” for the search engine that processes approximately 99,000 queries per second, this uncertainty and misinformation could “slowly erode our trust in google,” chinmay hegde, associate professor of computer science and engineering at nyu, told yahoo finance. in an announcement on may 21, google also shared that it would start testing placing search and shopping advertisements in its ai overviews answers to boost ad sales. google said it would mark ads as “sponsored” within the ai overviews results. users cannot turn off the feature, but there are work arounds. use a web browser that isn’t google chrome. this trick only works with desktops, but using safari or firefox should eliminate ai overviews in google searches. click the “web” tab that displays above google search results. next to tabs like “all” and “images,” there should be a section titled “web” that will eliminate the overviews section from view and only show you links. this should work on desktop and mobile browsers. someone created a hide google ai overviews chrome extension. you can download the extension here.

google: "there are bound to be some oddities and errors" in system that told people to eat rocks. on thursday, google capped off a rough week of providing inaccurate and sometimes dangerous answers through its experimental ai overview feature by authoring a follow up blog post titled, "ai overviews: about last week." in the post, attributed to google vp liz reid, head of google search, the firm formally acknowledged issues with the feature and outlined steps taken to improve a system that appears flawed by design, even if it doesn't realize it is admitting it. to recap, the ai overview feature which the company showed off at google i/o a few weeks ago aims to provide search users with summarized answers to questions by using an ai model integrated with google's web ranking systems. right now, it's an experimental feature that is not active for everyone, but when a participating user searches for a topic, they might see an ai generated answer at the top of the results, pulled from highly ranked web content and summarized by an ai model. while google claims this approach is "highly effective" and on par with its featured snippets in terms of accuracy, the past week has seen numerous examples of the ai system generating bizarre, incorrect, or even potentially harmful responses, as we detailed in a recent feature where ars reporter kyle orland replicated many of the unusual outputs. given the circulating ai overview examples, google almost apologizes in the post and says, "we hold ourselves to a high standard, as do our users, so we expect and appreciate the feedback, and take it seriously." but reid, in an attempt to justify the errors, then goes into some very revealing detail about why ai overviews provides erroneous information: ai overviews work very differently than chatbots and other llm products that people may have tried out. they’re not simply generating an output based on training data. while ai overviews are powered by a customized language model, the model is integrated with our core web ranking systems and designed to carry out traditional “search” tasks, like identifying relevant, high quality results from our index. that’s why ai overviews don’t just provide text output, but include relevant links so people can explore further. because accuracy is paramount in search, ai overviews are built to only show information that is backed up by top web results. this means that ai overviews generally don't “hallucinate” or make things up in the ways that other llm products might. here we see the fundamental flaw of the system: "ai overviews are built to only show information that is backed up by top web results." the design is based on the false assumption that google's page ranking algorithm favors accurate results and not seo gamed garbage. google search has been broken for some time, and now the company is relying on those gamed and spam filled results to feed its new ai model. even if the ai model draws from a more accurate source, as with the 1993 game console search seen above, google's ai language model can still make inaccurate conclusions about the "accurate" data, confabulating erroneous information in a flawed summary of the information available. generally ignoring the folly of basing its ai results on a broken page ranking algorithm, google's blog post instead attributes the commonly circulated errors to several other factors, including users making nonsensical searches "aimed at producing erroneous results." google does admit faults with the ai model, like misinterpreting queries, misinterpreting "a nuance of language on the web," and lacking sufficient high quality information on certain topics. it also suggests that some of the more egregious examples circulating on social media are fake screenshots. "some of these faked results have been obvious and silly," reid writes. "others have implied that we returned dangerous results for topics like leaving dogs in cars, smoking while pregnant, and depression. those ai overviews never appeared. so we’d encourage anyone encountering these screenshots to do a search themselves to check." (no doubt some of the social media examples are fake, but it's worth noting that any attempts to replicate those early examples now will likely fail because google will have manually blocked the results. and it is potentially a testament to how broken google search is if people believed extreme fake examples in the first place.) while addressing the "nonsensical searches" angle in the post, reid uses the example search, "how many rocks should i eat each day," which went viral in a tweet on may 23. reid says, "prior to these screenshots going viral, practically no one asked google that question." and since there isn't much data on the web that answers it, she says there is a "data void" or "information gap" that was filled by satirical content found on the web, and the ai model found it and pushed it as an answer, much like featured snippets might. so basically, it was working exactly as designed. as a result of the bad publicity, google claims to have made more than a dozen technical improvements to the ai overview system. these include "better detection of nonsensical queries," limiting the use of user generated content for potentially misleading advice, additional restrictions for sensitive topics like news and health, and manually squelching the model on certain topics known to produce erroneous results (i.e., filters triggered by keywords). perhaps unsurprisingly, the company is forgiving itself for its failures so far. "at the scale of the web, with billions of queries coming in every day, there are bound to be some oddities and errors. we’ve learned a lot over the past 25 years about how to build and maintain a high quality search experience, including how to learn from these errors to make search better for everyone." even if you allow for some errors in experimental software rolled out to millions of people, there's a problem with implied authority in the erroneous ai overview results. the fact remains that the technology does not inherently provide factual accuracy but reflects the inaccuracy of websites found in google's page ranking with an authority that can mislead people. you'd think tech companies would be striving to build customer trust, but now they are building ai tools and telling us not to trust the results because they may be wrong. maybe that's because we are not actually the customers, but the product. perhaps google can work around these issues before a wider rollout of the feature, but for now, it appears that ai overview will likely continue to occasionally output unusual or untrustworthy results while the company's ai search team puts out fires as it sees them. listing image: google ars technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. with our unique combination of technical savvy and wide ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, ars is the trusted source in a sea of information. after all, you don’t need to know everything, only what’s important.

in the past, google has done a lot with the knowledge graph (information box on the right hand side of the page) and featured snippets (position zero results / voice search results) to directly answer information search queries. in addition, gemini has recently been rolled out, replacing the technology previously used to answer information queries. gemini is the latest version of google’s large language model (llm), which is being used as a basis for artificial intelligence. in the past, initial tests with ai were carried out with palm and the search generative experience. in the second half of 2023, google integrated artificial intelligence into their search results in the form of “ai overviews”. information is now presented in google search in a completely new way. instead of classic search results, you now get ai supported summaries. the aim of this new feature is to give users a quick and easy way to inform themselves about a specific topic without having to visit lots of different websites. in the future, google will integrate more ai based features into their search, e.g. tailored search results or voice control. like before, google crawlers are still used to search through and index website content. artificial intelligence (ai) analyses the most relevant websites and extracts the most important information to convey in a format that is easy to understand. ai overviews also uses other sources: the introduction of google ai overviews brings with it some significant changes for google search for both users and website operators: well, it is partly true: in order to be included in ai overviews, websites must be optimised for ai through what is known as “ai optimisation”. it is now more important than ever to produce high quality and relevant content to make sure that it gets noticed by ai. a well structured and user friendly website is easier for ai to analyse. continuous adjustments have to be made to keep up with the latest developments in ai technology. the introduction of ai overviews marks a significant change for google search that brings with it both new opportunities and challenges for website operators. the exact effects of these developments in the long term remain to be seen. a lot of what we and our customers do as part of our search engine optimisation processes will largely stay the same. however, website operators will have to adapt their strategies to enjoy lasting success in the new era of ai supported searches, as ai overviews will change the rules of the game when it comes to search engine optimisation. to appear in google ai overviews, a combination of different skills is needed: to ensure that a website successfully appears in ai overviews, specialists from different fields must work closely together, just like we do here at ibm ix. a team that brings together content specialists, technical experts, data analysts, seo specialists and ai experts can optimally respond to any changes at google. marcus effenberger is digital marketing lead at ibm ix. his main responsibility lies in creating a solid data foundation to develop well informed marketing strategies. as a marketer focused on seo, sea, display & social ads, he increasingly works with marketing automation, cdp, and first party data strategies to optimise complex marketing ecosystems. katharina rapp is content design lead & agility expert at ibm ix. her main task is supporting public sector clients in their digital transformation. as lead of the content design team, she develops communication strategies and concepts for change management, conducts workshops and designs trainings. share .cls 1{fill:#1d1d1b;} link copied fresh breeze for your inbox: stay up to date on news, events and thought leadership topics from the digital world.

the company confirmed it is ‘taking swift action’ to remove some of the ai tool’s bizarre responses. the company confirmed it is ‘taking swift action’ to remove some of the ai tool’s bizarre responses. by kylie robison social media is abuzz with examples of google’s new ai overview product saying weird stuff, from telling users to put glue on their pizza to suggesting they eat rocks. the messy rollout means google is racing to manually disable ai overviews for specific searches as various memes get posted, which is why users are seeing so many of them disappear shortly after being posted to social networks. it’s an odd situation, since google has been testing ai overviews for a year now   the feature launched in beta in may 2023 as the search generative experience   and ceo sundar pichai has said the company served over a billion queries in that time. but pichai has also said that google’s brought the cost of delivering ai answers down by 80 percent over that same time, “driven by hardware, engineering and technical breakthroughs.” it appears that kind of optimization might have happened too early, before the tech was ready. “a company once known for being at the cutting edge and shipping high quality stuff is now known for low quality output that’s getting meme’d,” one ai founder, who wished to remain anonymous, told the verge. google continues to say that its ai overview product largely outputs “high quality information” to users. “many of the examples we’ve seen have been uncommon queries, and we’ve also seen examples that were doctored or that we couldn’t reproduce,” google spokesperson meghann farnsworth said in an email to the verge. farnsworth also confirmed that the company is “taking swift action” to remove ai overviews on certain queries “where appropriate under our content policies, and using these examples to develop broader improvements to our systems, some of which have already started to roll out.” gary marcus, an ai expert and an emeritus professor of neural science at new york university, told the verge that a lot of ai companies are “selling dreams” that this tech will go from 80 percent correct to 100 percent. achieving the initial 80 percent is relatively straightforward since it involves approximating a large amount of human data, marcus said, but the final 20 percent is extremely challenging. in fact, marcus thinks that last 20 percent might be the hardest thing of all. “you actually need to do some reasoning to decide: is this thing plausible? is this source legitimate? you have to do things like a human fact checker might do, that actually might require artificial general intelligence,” marcus said. and marcus and meta’s ai chief yann lecun both agree that the large language models that power current ai systems like google’s gemini and openai’s gpt 4 will not be what creates agi. look, it’s a tough spot for google to be in. bing went big on ai before google did with satya nadella’s famous “we made them dance” quote, openai is reportedly working on its own search engine, a fresh ai search startup is already worth $1 billion, and a younger generation of users who just want the best experience are switching to tiktok. the company is clearly feeling the pressure to compete, and pressure is what makes for messy ai releases. marcus points out that in 2022, meta released an ai system called galactica that had to be taken down shortly after its launch because, among other things, it told people to eat glass. sounds familiar. google has grand plans for ai overviews   the feature as it exists today is just a tiny slice of what the company announced last week. multistep reasoning for complex queries, the ability to generate an ai organized results page, video search in google lens   there’s a lot of ambition here. but right now, the company’s reputation hinges on just getting the basics right, and it’s not looking great. “[these models] are constitutionally incapable of doing sanity checking on their own work, and that’s what’s come to bite this industry in the behind,” marcus said. a weekly newsletter by david pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in the verge’s universe. © 2025 vox media, llc. all rights reserved

no more being told to eat rocks when you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. here’s how it works. after a lot of hype at google i/o, the tech giant’s ai overviews aren’t popping up in search results as much as they used to. according to a new analysis by seo platform brightedge, ai overviews appeared in less than 7% of google search queries at the end of june, compared to 11% when the month began. while not in the higher percentiles of search results regardless, the downward trend is notable after so much was made of the ai powered search results. ai overviews use the google gemini ai models to compose a summary based on the search results of a user’s query. google was very keen on the feature at first, but the downward trend for ai overviews actually goes back to april, even before the official announcement at google i/o. while ai overviews appeared in response to approximately 15% of queries at first, that number has dropped ever since. the decrease accelerated in june, with brightedge’s data showing a drop from 11% to 7% in the span of a month. this trend has been consistent in basically every case in june, but some saw particularly steep drops. searches about education saw ai overviews appearing 26% of the time at the beginning of the month and just 13% by the end. meanwhile, entertainment related queries fell from 14% to almost nothing, while e commerce ai overviews responses went from 26% to 9%. this does suggest google wants ai overviews to come up only when a problematic answer is less likely. even the physical space that ai overviews occupy at the top of search results is 13% smaller on average. this reduction in pixel space signifies google’s attempt to balance the prominence of ai generated content with traditional search results, possibly to mitigate the risks associated with ai inaccuracies. there are plenty of reasons to explain the numbers. you’d expect google to make ongoing adjustments based on what they hear from users and note in internal tests. it’s likely that the much publicized incorrect and downright dangerous ai generated answers had something to do with it. people will be wary of any tool that tells them to eat rocks. online search is incredibly valuable both technically and economically. ai seemed like an obvious enhancement to the industry, but it also raised red flags about its potential negative impact on traffic to websites. for now, there are still significant bugs, no matter what the long term impact might be. cutting down on ai overviews might assuage some concerns about ai harming organic website traffic for now, but google has made it clear it wants to implement ai overviews as much as possible, so that fight has only been tabled, not resolved. and google isn't alone in pursuing ai summaries of search results. microsoft bing and other rivals are trying to fill that gap. yet, despite the issues with ai overviews and the pullback from google, brightedge is bullish on google's ai search leadership. "there is no doubt that google's dominance remains strong, and what it does in ai matters to every business and marketer across the planet. brightedge founder and executive chairman jim yu said in a statement. "at the same time, new players are laying new foundations as we enter an ai led multi search universe. ai is in a constant state of progress, so the most important thing marketers can do now is leverage the precision of insights to monitor, prepare for changes, and adapt accordingly." sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. eric hal schwartz is a freelance writer for techradar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. for the last five years, he served as head writer for voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative ai and large language models. he's since become an expert on the products of generative ai models, such as openai’s chatgpt, anthropic’s claude, google gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. his experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. now, he's continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving ai space and its impact on their lives. eric is based in new york city. google is bragging about gemini 2.0 flash, but how does it compare to chatgpt for casual ai chatbot users? google fumbles gemini super bowl ad's cheese statistic corsair delivers a usb4 ssd that i believe delivers on that technological promise techradar is part of future us inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. visit our corporate site. © future us, inc. full 7th floor, 130 west 42nd street, new york, ny 10036.

affiliate links on android authority may earn us a commission. learn more. published onnovember 12, 2024 as a major ai advocate and enthusiast, i was one of the first people to sign up for google’s search generative experience, also known as google ai overviews. back when i first tried the feature, it was available only to those who signed up for search labs, and it was completely optional. out of curiosity, especially as someone who writes for a living and follows ai developments closely, i decided to explore it to see how it might continue to disrupt my industry. for the first few weeks, i found myself frequently reviewing the ai results, though i always took an extra step to delve deeper into the actual sources or search results further down the page. that’s how i realized that, like with most things related to ai, the results varied dramatically in terms of accuracy. for basic inquiries like “when did world war ii start?” i found it worked pretty well. however, when delving into specific battles or dates, things would quickly unravel. as time progressed, i found myself automatically scrolling past the ai responses for 90% of inquiries. part of this was because i couldn’t trust the information. the other reason was that this wasn’t how i wanted to use ai in the first place! when i have a question that’s philosophical, theoretical, open ended, or whimsical, or if i want to work out an idea in my head or ask a very direct question, i am more likely to turn to chatgpt or gemini. if it’s critically important or a broader topic that would benefit from trustworthy sources and a human perspective, that’s when i use google search. for example, i wouldn’t trust gemini’s ai to handle a search query about the best phones under $500. the ai results for buying advice around phones often mix old and new devices, feature misquoted specs, and other issues. but i would be much more likely to trust it with a simple question like clarifying a rule in monopoly, where the stakes of an inaccurate answer are much lower. typically, i use ai for lower stakes responses, the kind that won’t result in serious injury or significant errors if followed. that’s why i ultimately disabled the feature from search labs. admittedly, it took me a long time to do this, only turning it off a few months ago because it became easy to ignore. now it’s back, and this time there’s no way to opt out. i had hoped that the experience might have improved in time for its more public facing launch, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case. there has been some genuinely horrible advice found through google ai overviews, including a recent response suggesting someone drink urine to stay hydrated or the baffling advice about fixing blinkers, which included checking the blinker fluid. this led me to look up ways to turn off ai overviews, though i was surprised to learn this process isn’t exactly straightforward. there’s no way to truly turn off the feature, but there are some workarounds that accomplish the same thing. if you have yet to turn off google ai overviews on your desktop, i highly recommend doing so. google overviews may someday be worth revisiting (a topic for another debate), but right now, you should do yourself a favor and stick to more trustworthy sources for your search results. going forward, if you use the search box to trigger google, you won’t get any of the google ai overview results. technically, these just bypass the main search results and filter out everything as opposed to truly disabling google ai overviews. the result is about the same, however. unfortunately, blocking google ai overviews on mobile is a much more difficult prospect than on desktop. there’s no support for plugins, and while you can technically select a custom search engine, you can’t add the necessary filter string yourself. the good news is that there’s a workaround site called tenbluelinks.org, which aims to make it easier to rid the web of unwelcome ai overviews on mobile. to quickly change chrome (or any mobile browser that supports custom search engines) on android you just need to visit the aforementioned site from your mobile device. from there: while you can use the above method in firefox, it’s also possible to change it manually in firefox:

“ai overviews and more” is an experiment in search labs that lets you see ai overviews on more google searches and offers access to additional generative ai features in search. “ai overviews and more” has replaced the search labs experiment known as sge (search generative experience). learn more about where the “ai overviews and more” experiment is available. tips: learn about the languages and countries where search labs is available. tip: this is available only for english queries. note: turning off “ai overviews and more” in search labs will not disable all ai overviews in search. ai overviews are part of google search like other features, such as knowledge panels, and can’t be turned off. tip: you can also provide feedback by selecting the three dot menu icon at the top right of each overview.

linkedin and 3rd parties use essential and non essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off linkedin. learn more in our cookie policy. select accept to consent or reject to decline non essential cookies for this use. you can update your choices at any time in your settings. agree & join linkedin by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. chief technology and innovation officer at solasai i'm really excited to see my colleague, co author, and friend, patrick hall, quoted in the the new york times today about google's rollout of generative ai. it's yet another lesson that we need to be careful when we put this stuff into production. patrick is an amazing and all too uncommon voice of reason when it comes to generative ai. i hope more people and companies listen to those of us excited by its potential but wary of its limitations. #genai #responsibleai https://lnkd.in/eep hyda machine learning & ai risk management very kind nick schmidt ! to view or add a comment, sign in co founder & ceo, verax ai why do companies roll back generative ai features more frequently than "traditional" ones? unlike non ai logic, generative ai is unpredictable and no amount of pre release testing can ensure its behavior in real world usage. even companies like google are not immune; https://lnkd.in/etsszvzg. #ai #llm #trustworthyai #google to view or add a comment, sign in ai & data governance | responsible ai a significant and relevant step from #google https://lnkd.in/gmxzzg29 if your ai product is producing more harm than good, better to rollback. hope others learn the lesson. #responsibleai to view or add a comment, sign in 101 followers what do you think about ai overview? it's ready to live, debit ongoing and also testing   development does. till this happen, lets read more. https://lnkd.in/dzmngybe #aioverview #sge #googlesearch #usabloggerbook to view or add a comment, sign in account executive @ google cloud | go to market strategy, direct sales #googleio is here! check out what ceo of google and alphabet, sundar pichai, had to say about how google is building more helpful products and features with ai. my favorites were  2m context window increase, context caching and learnlm. to view or add a comment, sign in googler | ☁️ solutions architect & 🚀 digital advisor | information systems engineer & international mba #googleio is here! check out what ceo of #google and #alphabet, sundar pichai, had to say about how google is building more helpful products and features with #ai to view or add a comment, sign in call: +1 530 729 3367 ceo @ mnky.agency in google's latest move, they've officially dubbed their ai powered search experience as search generative experience (sge). this means that ai generated summaries and answers will be front and center in search results. read here: https://lnkd.in/ef k8qtk to view or add a comment, sign in global demand marketing at google check out what ceo of google and alphabet, sundar pichai, had to say about how google is building more helpful products and features with ai. to view or add a comment, sign in call: +1 530 729 3367 ceo @ mnky.agency in google's latest move, they've officially dubbed their ai powered search experience as search generative experience (sge). this means that ai generated summaries and answers will be front and center in search results. read here: https://lnkd.in/ef k8qtk to view or add a comment, sign in leadership. passion. excellence.   an award winning civil engineer/senior project manager google i/o 2024 conference (5/14/24)   121 references to "ai" article: google i/o 2024: here's everything google just announced | techcrunch video: cnet   google i/o 2024: everything revealed in 12 minutes   youtube ai evolution: google showcased an ai evolution with new products like an ai powered search engine and workspace ai helpers. also: project astra, ai which responds to sight, sounds, voice, and text. learnlm, new ai models fine tuned for learning. gemini 1.5 pro with up to 2 million token input size. gemini live for in depth voice conversations and use video or photo input. veo, generate videos from text to view or add a comment, sign in call: +1 530 729 3367 ceo @ mnky.agency in google's latest move, they've officially dubbed their ai powered search experience as search generative experience (sge). this means that ai generated summaries and answers will be front and center in search results. read here: https://lnkd.in/ef k8qtk to view or add a comment, sign in 3,407 followers create your free account or sign in to continue your search or by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. new to linkedin? join now or new to linkedin? join now by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. linkedin never miss a beat on the app don’t have the app? get it in the microsoft store.

your all in one suite of seo essentials. raise your local seo visibility with complete local seo management. serp tracking and analytics for enterprise seo experts. power your seo with our index of over 44 trillion links. see which moz seo solution best meets your business needs. power your seo strategy & ai models with custom data solutions. get top competitive seo metrics like da, top pages and more. find traffic driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index. explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data. uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors. see top seo metrics for free as you browse the web. explore all the free seo tools moz has to offer. the #1 most popular introduction to seo, trusted by millions. broaden your knowledge with seo resources for all skill levels. learn modern seo best practices from industry experts. step by step guides to search success from the authority on seo. upskill and get certified with on demand courses & certifications. insights & discussions from an seo community of 500,000+. uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time. earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights. gain a competitive edge in the ever changing world of search. moz was the first & remains the most trusted seo company. explore how moz drives roi with a proven track record of success. get the scoop on the latest and greatest from moz. the author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of moz. the author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of moz. google does some things phenomenally well. i think their word processing suite, which encompasses google docs, google sheets, and related products, is one of the best things on the web for the collaborative work it supports. i use it daily with gratitude and wish all their rollouts were this ingenious. but, something is seriously awry with the may 2024 rollout of ai overviews (pictured above) after a year of limited public sge experimentation. the “artificially intelligent” answers now being given premium screenspace in google’s results are meant to quickly deliver information to searchers, but too often, they are delivering misinformation that ranges from plain bizarre to perilous to public health. google has a long history of launching problematic products and then shuttering them, and errors are a norm of any highly experimental atmosphere. but looking at some of today’s examples, it’s easy to understand why genuine shock is being registered across the seo industry that this feature was let out of the gate in its current state. i’ll round up some of the oddest ai overviews that have been spotted, share an ex googler’s take on why we’re now being exposed to this feature, and also focus on a famous reality check anecdote that signals why known human gullibility needs to be responsibly factored into any large, public experiment. as you look at these examples, i’d ask that you keep somewhere in your mind a personal experience you’ve had that taught you how easily human beings can be duped, fooled, misled, tricked, or otherwise led astray. let’s start out with a (potentially) harmless example provided by shawn huber of google’s new ai overview feature, getting it wrong when a searcher wants to know which us presidents attended uw madison: we can try to tell ourselves that any logical person is going to realize that a president like james buchanan, who died in 1868, cannot possibly have graduated three times across two centuries in which he was no longer alive, or that jfk, who was assassinated in 1963, was not attending a university thirty years later. we can hope that most people would realize that something is seriously wrong with nearly all of this artificially intelligent answer. but what if, instead of learning us history in school some decades ago, you were ten years old right now and trying to research a school report by looking at this very official looking answer from google that outranks everything else in their results? what kind of education would you be receiving from the web? what would you think of this information, of history, of google? let’s try a simpler question. lily ray just wanted to see some examples of women in their 50s, but instead got an octogenarian and another candidate of unspecified age: next up, both time and history get twisted into peculiar shapes with jessica vaugn’s capture of google’s definition of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as being most strongly associated with relationship advice rather than an ancient biblical text called the book of revelations. the answer seems to me to convey the idea that the new testament was written largely to provide this metaphor for pop psychology: technical information, at least for the seo industry, also does not seem to be a strong suit for ai overviews, as you will quickly realize by reading the last three definitions in this peculiar list of advice tamara hellgren received when asking how to be #1 on google: considering running with scissors? joe youngblood reports that google appears in favor of it by presenting a joke in a format that looks so factual: this is all bad enough, but probably isn’t a threat to public health… until we begin searching google for health related information in this new ai overview era. the most cited example i’ve seen so far is the one in which we are artificially intelligently instructed to drink human bodily fluids in order to quickly flush kidney stones. the public generally gagged over this grotesque advice, but i saw only one person on twitter   tyler the wise   citing the other glaring error in this prominent information: i hear from sufferers that it can be incredibly painful to have and pass a kidney stone. you’re probably not at your most discerning in the midst of intense physical pain, but i sincerely hope no one is in such agony that they would act on this very official answer from google by drinking either liters or quarts of said fluid. you never know with people, though. you just never know. it was reported during the early stages of the covid pandemic that some people were drinking bleach as a “remedy.” as for the liquid measure discrepancy, if you’re artificially intelligently instructed to pour the wrong amount of anything into a recipe, a car engine, or any major appliance, that could have some difficult consequences of its own. particularly if ai is telling you to add glue to pizza sauce, as peter yang shared on x. and what if we have the misfortune to suffer from appendicitis? the naturally intelligent (and only correct!) answer is that you should immediately go to the nearest er because you might need life saving surgery. lily ray is, of course, joking here in response to artificial intelligence telling avram piltch to drink mint tea while doubled over in pain from a potentially life threatening condition, but i worry that not everyone in my country is as discerning as lily ray: this type of public health misinformation represents a very real danger and should not go unregulated and unchecked. it could cost the lives of any person who is either not thinking very clearly while ill or who is simply gullible. as could incomplete health information about a symptom like jaw pain. it could just be something like tmj (non life threatening), or it could be a warning sign of cardiac arrest (potentially fatal), but google’s ai overview fails to mention this to me: and david coleman waded into the very murky waters of what google’s premium screenspace is now telling women about tobacco: i sincerely hope you never get bitten by a rattlesnake, but if you do, it would be the opposite of intelligent to follow this ai overview spotted by erin ross. as barry schwartz reports, step two in this dance with danger is google now monetizing ai overviews with ads. businesses may feel pushed to pay to play, but it will be a risky move tying your brand to a publisher of known misinformation. if it’s your mint tea being advertised in conjunction with google’s negligent content that costs someone their life due to a ruptured appendix, i am not sure what the outcome would be in a court of law in terms of liability. in terms of ethical liability, i’m afraid the blame here is on google’s side for releasing such a faulty product in a vertical like health. they just shouldn’t have done this. die hard ai proponents and shareholders will respond that it’s up to the individual to do their own research and decide on the degree of factualness in the online content they read. i see this take everywhere i go these days. and i find it anti social and unempathetic to the human plight. i’d like to explain why. image source: southfork ranch even if you weren’t born yet in 1980, you may have heard this american pop culture catchphrase stemming from an episode of the wildly popular soap opera dallas, in which the tv show’s villain was assailed by a mysterious figure. the follow up episode that revealed the identity of the assassin was the second highest rated primetime telecast in history. in other words, it was syndicated content which captured the eyes of hundreds of millions of people in multiple countries in a pre internet age. for most viewers, dallas was entertainment. it began as a disco era look at the impossibly dramatic lives of texas oil barons in a time before anyone was too worried about climate change to be able to unreflectively enjoy plotlines about fossil fuels, governmental corruption, and dirty deals. the now retro costuming was stylish, the sets were lavish, and multiple nations were hooked on the story for over a decade. it may seem like a strange setup to yield a life lesson, but i’ve never been able to forget something i heard a tour guide explain at the fictional southfork ranch where j.r. ewing’s family were presented as living in the show. i’d sort of brushed it off when i heard actress shirley jones explain that children wrote into the tv show the partridge family, begging to get to come live with her and ride around the country in her colorful bus singing songs with her television kids. after all, as a child, i wanted to write to rankin bass to plead with them to send me the spotted elephant from the island of misfit toys in rudolph the red nosed reindeer if no one really wanted him. we expect children to lack adult discernment and be gullible. but it’s quite a different takeaway that when actor larry hagman pretended to be shot while portraying the character of j.r. ewing in dallas, adult fans tried to break into the actual ranch used as a set for southfork to find out if j.r. had died or was alright. according to the location’s tour guide, people were sending condolence letters to the show and inquiries about whether j.r. had survived. if we let ourselves fall into thinking that, of course, we would know better than to confuse a soap opera with reality, we make a serious error in imagining that the world is made up of “us”. our society is filled with vulnerable people who may not be as readily able to make such distinctions and who are often preyed upon by individuals and entities seeking to profit from misrepresentation and misinformation. there’s a reason scammers target elderly grandparents with phone calls, claiming to be their grandchildren needing bail money. vulnerable people are part of our society, and i find myself looking at these medically dangerous ai overviews and thinking about the life lesson dallas taught me about the frailty of the human condition. so, if you and i can think about the troubling consequences misinformation that looks so official might have on vulnerable people, we can assume that the extremely smart folks at google have been able to mull this over, too. and that leads us to ask why google seems to be running at top speed to put out ai based features, even if they contain information that could be, at best, a blush worthy embarrassment to their long trusted brand and, at worst, a public health disaster. i found this theory from ex googler scott jenson worth reading on linkedin: google is so powerful, so omnipresent in our daily lives now. unlike the person who is scrambling after being bitten by a rattlesnake, google feeling pressured to act ill judgingly out of a “stone cold panic,” as scott jenson puts it, seems like strange territory. they’ve dictated the rules of the tech “game” for so long. yet, like me, you’re probably hearing the same story on all sides in multiple industries and across multiple brands. “we have to have ai!”. lily ray is doing a good job documenting users desperately trying to shut ai overviews off and seos freaking out about our apparent inability to properly track this feature to understand how it is working and what it is doing. the more i think about it, the more scott jenson’s take on people acting out of panic seems right… a panic nobody i know of (who isn’t a shareholder) asked for. google has been under a great deal of regulatory and public scrutiny of late, and our focus is being pulled away from the things they do well by the release of features that appear to give them little credit in terms of public trust. ironically, i think the best use of ai may well be as an assistive technology for people with different abilities when said technology is capable of being trusted to carry out specific tasks for people who need extra help. but in the present iteration of ai overviews, it just doesn’t belong in a medical context. it’s one thing if google wants to continue experimenting with ai on non life altering topics. they can summarize soap opera episodes and work on getting it straight about presidents posthumously attending college for the next decade, and no one will be the worse for it, really. but health and safety are in their own category. so these are my asks… to the seo community: please keep documenting the disinformation you are encountering via google’s ai overviews. while we can’t reach every vulnerable person, if it becomes a cultural norm to deride artificial intelligence as dangerously inferior to the natural intelligence that brought us such figures as leonardo davinci, albert einstein, and dr. martin luther king, jr., perhaps we can turn ai from monster into meme so that few people will think of it as a cool source of ymyl advice. to google: please turn off ai overviews for medical queries. vulnerable people view your results as a source of truth and could be hurt by following medical misinformation they discover being so prominently displayed in your results, regardless of any warnings you attach about experimentation. i think this is particularly critical in the united states, which lacks the universal healthcare enjoyed by more humanitarian countries. people who cannot afford to see a doctor here are doubtless turning to google when trying to diagnose and treat symptoms. while that’s not an ethical crisis you created, it is one you will contribute negatively to by promoting dangerous medical advice. if people are confused enough to believe that a tv show is real, they might well not know how to distinguish between the right and wrong steps to take when bitten by a snake, especially if google is championing wrong answers. as is the case with the four horsemen of the apocalypse, there seems to be some confusion as to whether the phrase “with great power comes great responsibility” comes from comic books, the bible, or someplace else, but it’s a good axiom for today. nearly 20 years ago, i wrote an article questioning whether google should include hospitals in their nascent local search results because they were so prominent on the page, and, in the midst of a medical emergency, i discovered that the information they contained was wrong. i’m singing the same tune now, asking google to put people over profit out of a sense of their own great power and responsibility. what’s changing is that i’m finding myself in a growing chorus instead of feeling like i’m singing a little solo. let’s hope someone is listening! miriam ellis is the local seo subject matter expert at moz and has been cited among the top five most prolific women writers in the seo industry. she is a consultant, columnist, local business advocate, and an award winning fine artist. with moz pro, you have the tools you need to get seo right   all in one place. unlock the power of advanced seo tools and data driven insights. contact the help team

radio schuman this is radio schuman, your new go to podcast to spice up your weekday mornings with relevant news, insights, and behind the scenes from brussels and beyond. no comment no agenda, no argument, no bias, no comment. get the story without commentary. my wildest prediction dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries the big question deep dive conversations with business leaders euronews tech talks euronews tech talks goes beyond discussions to explore the impact of new technologies on our lives. with explanations, engaging q&as, and lively conversations, the podcast provides valuable insights into the intersection of technology and society. water matters europe's water is under increasing pressure. pollution, droughts, floods are taking their toll on our drinking water, lakes, rivers and coastlines. join us on a journey around europe to see why protecting ecosystems matters, how our wastewater can be better managed, and to discover some of the best water solutions. video reports, an animated explainer series and live debate   find out why water matters, from euronews. climate now we give you the latest climate facts from the world’s leading source, analyse the trends and explain how our planet is changing. we meet the experts on the front line of climate change who explore new strategies to mitigate and adapt. radio schuman this is radio schuman, your new go to podcast to spice up your weekday mornings with relevant news, insights, and behind the scenes from brussels and beyond. no comment no agenda, no argument, no bias, no comment. get the story without commentary. my wildest prediction dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries the big question deep dive conversations with business leaders euronews tech talks euronews tech talks goes beyond discussions to explore the impact of new technologies on our lives. with explanations, engaging q&as, and lively conversations, the podcast provides valuable insights into the intersection of technology and society. water matters europe's water is under increasing pressure. pollution, droughts, floods are taking their toll on our drinking water, lakes, rivers and coastlines. join us on a journey around europe to see why protecting ecosystems matters, how our wastewater can be better managed, and to discover some of the best water solutions. video reports, an animated explainer series and live debate   find out why water matters, from euronews. climate now we give you the latest climate facts from the world’s leading source, analyse the trends and explain how our planet is changing. we meet the experts on the front line of climate change who explore new strategies to mitigate and adapt. experts are concerned about bias and misinformation after google's new ai overviews produced some misleading responses. google unveiled a new feature this month in the us that includes artificial intelligence (ai) generated summaries at the top of its search engine. but already, some have pointed out errors in the information included in the new "ai overviews". “yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care," said google's search engine in response to a query by an ap reporter. "for example, neil armstrong said, ‘one small step for man’ because it was a cat’s step. buzz aldrin also deployed cats on the apollo 11 mission," the summary added. none of this is true, but similar errors have been shared on social media since the makeover of google's search page. one user shared a post where the ai overview appeared to suggest eating one rock per day, while another claimed ai overview recommended adding glue to pizza. melanie mitchell, an ai researcher at the santa fe institute in new mexico, asked google how many muslims have been president of the united states and the search tool responded confidently with a long debunked conspiracy theory: "the united states has had one muslim president, barack hussein obama". mitchell said the summary backed up the claim by citing a chapter in an academic book, written by historians. yet the chapter didn’t make the bogus claim, it was only referring to the false theory. “google’s ai system is not smart enough to figure out that this citation is not actually backing up the claim,” mitchell said in an email to the ap. "given how untrustworthy it is, i think this ai overview feature is very irresponsible and should be taken offline," mitchell added. google said in a statement on friday that it is taking “swift action” to fix errors, such as the obama falsehood, that violate its content policies. but in most cases, google claims the system is working the way it should thanks to extensive testing before its public release. “the vast majority of ai overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web," google said in a written statement. "many of the examples we’ve seen have been uncommon queries, and we’ve also seen examples that were doctored or that we couldn’t reproduce". it's hard to reproduce errors made by ai language models, in part because they're inherently random. ai models work by predicting what words would best answer the questions asked of them based on the data they've been trained on. they're prone to making things up, a widely studied problem known as hallucination. the ap tested google's ai feature with several questions and shared some of its responses with subject matter experts. asked what to do about a snake bite, google gave an answer that was “impressively thorough,” said robert espinoza, a biology professor at the california state university, northridge, who is also president of the american society of ichthyologists and herpetologists. but other experts warned that if people ask an urgent question, the chance that there could be an error is a problem. google's rivals have also been closely following the reaction, with the tech giant facing pressure to compete with other companies as they race to roll out ai.
artificial intelligence supported by google appears to have turned off its new a.i. overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors. by nico grant reporting from san francisco when sundar pichai, google’s chief executive, introduced a generative artificial intelligence feature for the company’s search engine last month, he and his colleagues demonstrated the new capability with six text based queries that the public could try out. the questions included “how do you clean a fabric sofa” and “what should i use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet.” these were intended to highlight how google’s new feature, a.i. overviews, could generate full and useful information summaries above traditional search results. but by friday, only one of the six queries still yielded an a.i. overview, according to tests by the new york times. instead, the feature was noticeably less prevalent. the search for “what should i use to get a coffee stain out of my carpet” now resulted in a snippet of text from a website, jdog carpet cleaning & floor care, while “how do you clean a fabric sofa” was replaced by a link to hgtv’s website with the answer. (the results of the searches may vary depending on the user and location.) the disappearance of a.i. overviews for some of the searches appeared to be part of a broader rollback after the new technology produced a litany of untruths and errors   including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and suggesting that people ingest rocks for nutrients. users loudly complained on social media about the mistakes, in many cases outright making fun of google. liz reid, who was recently promoted to google’s head of search, wrote in a blog post on thursday that the company had pared back a.i. overviews in certain ways, launching “additional triggering refinements” to offer more careful responses about health, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like reddit. “we’ll keep improving when and how we show ai overviews and strengthening our protections,” she wrote, adding that google was working on updates to improve broad sets of search results.

 copyright 2025 the associated press. all rights reserved. file   liz reid, google head of search, speaks at a google i/o event in mountain view, calif., may 14, 2024. google said on friday, may 31, 2024, it has made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems after its retooled search engine was found spitting out erroneous information. (ap photo/jeff chiu, file) google said friday it has made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems after its retooled search engine was found spitting out erroneous information. the tech company unleashed a makeover of its search engine in mid may that frequently provides ai generated summaries on top of search results. soon after, social media users began sharing screenshots of its most outlandish answers. google has largely defended its ai overviews feature, saying it is typically accurate and was tested extensively beforehand.