Google will take ‘swift action’ on AI Overviews, says the ‘vast majority’ are good

Ben Schoon | May 24 2024 - 2:15 pm PT

Examples of Google’s AI Overviews going off the rails have quickly gone viral as the update has rolled out to the public, but while the company has had to disable AI on some particularly viral queries, Google reiterates that the “vast majority” of AI results are “high-quality.”

Over the past couple of days, Google’s AI Overviews have been caught spitting out incorrect, and sometimes potentially dangerous information. There are many examples of this floating around, with one particularly viral example telling people to put glue on pizza.

That’s a potentially dangerous suggestion, but Google has stopped serving AI Overviews on the query that originally triggered it; “cheese not sticking to pizza.” Another dangerous query we’ve noticed that AI Overviews are no longer appearing on is the temperature chicken must be cooked to. This doesn’t seem to apply across the board, though, and it’s worth noting that no two AI Overviews will be identical. Often, making the same search twice will result in the Overview re-wording the result or focusing on a different aspect of the answer.

Google, in a statement to 9to5Google, confirmed that it is “taking swift action where appropriate under our content policies” in regards to some of these dangerous results.

Google further notes that many of the viral examples circulating right now are “doctored” or couldn’t be reproduced – it’s a bit ironic that Google is pointing the finger at purposeful misinformation given that AI Overviews have been presenting other purposeful misinformation as fact – and said that the “vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information.”

A Google spokesperson explains:

The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web. 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. We conducted extensive testing before launching this new experience, and as with other features we’ve launched in Search, we appreciate the feedback. We’re taking swift action 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.