How the ‘confident authority’ of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Experts say tool can give ‘completely wrong’ medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm • AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site, study suggests Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world’s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, first set out the company’s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google’s core product in a quarter of a century. By July 2025, the technology had expanded to more than 200 countries in 40 languages, with 2 billion people served AI Overviews each month. Continue reading...