Google Search Tweaks AI Overviews After Misleading Responses

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May 31, 2024

Image copyright: Smith Collection/Gado/Contributor/Archive Photos via Getty Imagesstory last updated May 31

The Facts

Liz Reid, the head of Google's search team, Thursday confirmed in a blog post that the company would be improving its new AI Overviews feature after it gave misleading answers to some users.
The AI Overviews feature, which was rolled out to US users this month, places an AI-generated answer at the top of search results. Screenshots of the feature telling users to add glue to pizza and eat one rock a day were shared on social media.

The Spin

Narrative A

The technology behind AI Overviews has intrinsic flaws that make it unsuitable for wide release. While the technology is able to produce fluent language, it's less effective at producing accurate information. As long as large-language models use probability to produce their text, they'll always run the risk of being misinformation machines.

MIT Technology Review

Narrative B

Sadly, Google was the victim, not the originator, of misinformation in this case. Satirical and fake screenshots claiming that AI Overviews endorsed dangerous and offensive claims were shared widely, tarnishing Google's reputation. The internal testing has shown that only small tweaks are needed to keep it safe, effective, and accurate.