Do I’ve the flu or Covid? Why do I get up feeling drained? What is inflicting the ache in my chest? For greater than 20 years, typing medical questions into the world’s hottest search engine has served up a listing of hyperlinks to web sites with the solutions. Google these well being queries in the present day and the response will possible be written by synthetic intelligence.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief government, first set out the firm’s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual convention in Mountain View, California, in Might 2024. Beginning that month, he stated, US customers would see a brand new function, AI Overviews, which would offer information summaries above conventional search outcomes. The change marked the greatest shake-up of Google’s core product in 1 / 4 of a century. By July 2025, the expertise had expanded to greater than 200 international locations in 40 languages, with 2 billion individuals served AI Overviews every month.
With the speedy rollout of AI Overviews, Google is racing to shield its conventional search enterprise, which generates about $200bn (£147bn) a yr, before upstart AI rivals can derail it. “We are main at the frontier of AI and transport at an unimaginable tempo,” Pichai said last July. AI Overviews specifically have been “performing effectively”, he added.
However overviews carry dangers, specialists say. They use generative AI to present snapshots of information a few subject or query, including conversational solutions above the conventional search leads to the blink of an eye fixed. They will cite sources, however do not essentially know when that supply is incorrect.
Inside weeks of the function launching in the US, users encountered untruths throughout a variety of topics. One AI Overview stated Andrew Jackson, the seventh US president, graduated from college in 2005. Elizabeth Reid, Google’s head of search, responded to criticism in a blog post. She conceded that “in a small variety of instances”, AI Overviews had misinterpreted language on net pages and offered inaccurate information. “At the scale of the net, with billions of queries coming in on daily basis, there are sure to be some oddities and errors,” she wrote.
However when these questions are about well being, accuracy and context are important and non-negotiable, specialists say. Google is dealing with mounting scrutiny of its AI Overviews for medical queries after a Guardian investigation discovered individuals have been being put vulnerable to hurt by false and deceptive well being information.
The corporate says AI Overviews are “reliable”. However the Guardian found some medical summaries served up inaccurate well being information and put individuals vulnerable to hurt. In a single case, which specialists stated was “actually harmful”, Google wrongly advised individuals with pancreatic most cancers to keep away from high-fat meals. Specialists stated this was the actual reverse of what ought to be really useful, and should improve the threat of sufferers dying from the illness.
In one other “alarming” instance, the firm offered bogus information about essential liver operate checks, which may depart individuals who had severe liver illness wrongly considering they have been wholesome. What AI Overviews stated was regular may differ drastically from what was truly thought of regular, specialists stated. The summaries could lead on to significantly in poor health sufferers wrongly considering they’d a traditional check consequence and not bothering to attend follow-up appointments.
AI Overviews about girls’s most cancers checks additionally offered “completely wrong” information, which specialists stated may lead to individuals dismissing real signs.
Google initially sought to downplay the Guardian’s findings. From what its personal clinicians may assess, the firm stated, the AI Overviews that alarmed specialists linked to respected sources and really useful looking for knowledgeable recommendation. “We make investments considerably in the high quality of AI Overviews, notably for subjects like well being, and the overwhelming majority present correct information,” a spokesperson stated.
Inside days, nonetheless, the company removed a few of the AI Overviews for well being queries flagged by the Guardian. “We do not remark on particular person removals inside search,” a spokesperson stated. “In instances the place AI Overviews miss some context, we work to make broad enhancements, and we additionally take motion underneath our insurance policies the place applicable.”
Whereas specialists welcomed the removing of some AI summaries for well being queries, many stay fearful. “Our greater concern with all this is that it is nit-picking a single search consequence and Google can simply shut off the AI Overviews for that but it surely’s not tackling the greater situation of AI Overviews for well being,” says Vanessa Hebditch, the director of communications and coverage at the British Liver Belief, a liver well being charity.
“There are nonetheless too many examples on the market of Google AI Overviews giving individuals inaccurate well being information,” provides Sue Farrington, the chair of the Affected person Info Discussion board, which promotes evidence-based well being information to sufferers, the public and healthcare professionals.
A new study has prompted extra considerations. When researchers analysed the responses to greater than 50,000 health-related searches in Germany to see which sources AI Overviews rely on most, one consequence stood out instantly. The single most cited domain was YouTube.
“This issues as a result of YouTube is not a medical writer,” the researchers wrote. “It is a general-purpose video platform. Anybody can add content material there (eg, board-certified physicians, hospital channels, but additionally wellness influencers, life coaches and creators with no medical coaching in any respect).”
In drugs, it is not solely the place solutions come from that matter, or their degree of accuracy, however how they are offered to customers, specialists say. “With AI Overviews, customers not encounter a variety of sources that they’ll examine and critically assess,” says Hannah van Kolfschooten, a researcher in AI, well being and regulation at the College of Basel. “As a substitute, they are offered with a single, assured, AI-generated reply that reveals medical authority.
“This implies that the system does not merely replicate well being information on-line, however actively restructures it. When that response is constructed on sources by no means designed to meet medical requirements, reminiscent of YouTube movies, this creates a brand new type of unregulated medical authority on-line.”
Google says AI Overviews are constructed to surface information backed up by top web results, and embrace hyperlinks to net content material that helps the information offered in the abstract. Folks can use these hyperlinks to dig deeper on a subject, the firm advised the Guardian.
However the single blocks of textual content in AI Overviews, combining well being information from a number of sources, could cause confusion, says Nicole Gross, an affiliate professor in enterprise and society at the Nationwide Faculty of Eire.
“As soon as the AI abstract seems, customers are a lot much less possible to analysis additional, which implies that they are disadvantaged of the alternative to critically consider and examine information, and even deploy their widespread sense when it comes to health-related points.”
Specialists have raised different considerations with the Guardian. Even when and when AI Overviews do present correct information a few particular medical subject, they could not distinguish between robust proof from randomised trials and weaker proof from observational research, they are saying. Some additionally miss necessary caveats about that proof, they add.
Having such claims listed subsequent to each other in an AI Overview might also give the impression that some are higher established than they actually are. Solutions may change as AI Overviews evolve, even when the science hasn’t shifted. “That implies that individuals are getting a special reply relying on once they search, and that’s not ok,” says Athena Lamnisos, the chief government of the Eve Enchantment most cancers charity.
Google advised the Guardian that hyperlinks included in AI Overviews have been dynamic and adjusted based mostly on the information that was most related, useful and well timed for a given search. If AI Overviews misinterpreted net content material or missed some context, the firm would use these errors to enhance its techniques, and likewise take motion when applicable, it stated.
The largest fear is that bogus and harmful medical information or recommendation in AI Overviews “finally ends up getting translated into the on a regular basis practices, routines and lifetime of a affected person, even in tailored types”, says Gross. “In healthcare, this may flip right into a matter of life and demise.”
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