Google is imposing restrictions on its AI Overviews search feature after it generated several bizarre and inaccurate results, the company announced on May 30. AI Overviews, launched at Google I/O 2024 on May 14 after nearly a year of testing, provides users with quick AI-generated summaries of topics with links for further exploration, appearing at the top of search results, as reported by Moneycontrol.
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Initially available to hundreds of millions of users in the US, Google plans to extend AI Overviews to over a billion users by the end of the year. This initiative is part of Google’s strategy to modernize its search product for the generative AI era, amid increasing competition from companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, and newcomers like Perplexity.
Google Forced To Implement Restrictions
However, in the past week, the feature has reportedly offered some unusual and incorrect advice, such as suggesting users eat rocks or use glue on pizza to help cheese stick, with screenshots of these errors widely circulated online. In a blog post on May 30, Google’s head of search, Liz Reid, stated that the company has now implemented detection mechanisms for “nonsensical queries” and limited the inclusion of satire and humor content in AI Overviews.
Google has also updated its systems to reduce the use of user-generated content that could provide misleading advice and has added restrictions for queries where AI Overviews were not particularly helpful. The company is addressing the “small number of AI Overviews that violate content policies,” which includes potentially harmful or obscene information. Reid noted that policy violations were found in “less than one in every 7 million unique queries” featuring AI Overviews. She argued that AI Overviews generally do not “hallucinate” or invent information; errors usually arise from misinterpreting queries, language nuances, or insufficient information.
Reid compared AI Overviews to “featured snippets,” a long-standing search feature that uses AI to highlight key information with links to web content, claiming their accuracy rates are similar. She emphasized that the feature underwent extensive testing before launch, including rigorous red-teaming, evaluations with typical user queries, and tests on a portion of search traffic.
Additionally, Reid stated that Google will not display AI Overviews for hard news topics where timeliness and accuracy are critical, and for certain health topics, the company has added refinements to improve quality protections. These updates come as Google aims to monetize its AI features by testing search and shopping ads within AI Overviews.
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