Google is expanding its AI-generated summaries for search queries to six new countries, including India. This development comes just two months after the company scaled back some capabilities following a problematic launch earlier this year.
The feature, known as AI Overviews, offers a concise summary at the top of search results, providing quick answers before displaying traditional web links. Initially launched for all US users in May, AI Overviews had been in a trial phase for a year before that. However, the rollout was marred by numerous inaccuracies, such as Google’s AI bizarrely listing glue as a pizza ingredient, and claiming former US President Barack Obama is Muslim.
Google later acknowledged the “odd and erroneous overviews” and announced several updates for improvement. These included limiting the types of queries that would trigger AI-generated responses and restricting the use of user-generated content from sites like Reddit as sources for these answers.
In its latest blog post, Google emphasised that AI Overviews are based on the company’s core quality and safety systems, which have been honed over decades. The search giant stressed its commitment to delivering reliable and high-quality information, stating, “We’ll be rolling this expansion out gradually over the course of several weeks, with a focus on maintaining Search’s high bar for information quality.”
The AI Overviews feature is now being introduced in India, the United Kingdom, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil, with support for local languages in each region. In India, users can switch between English and Hindi using a language toggle button and even listen to responses with a Text-To-Speech option.
The expansion of AI Overviews comes amid growing concerns within the media industry that these AI-generated features could reduce referral traffic to media websites. However, Google has countered this by stating that AI Overviews have led to visits to a wider variety of websites, particularly for more complex questions. Google claims that clicks from search result pages featuring AI Overviews are higher quality, as users tend to spend more time on the sites they visit.
To further support website traffic, Google is adding more hyperlinks to the AI Overviews feature. In addition to displaying related websites beside the AI-generated answer, Google is also internally testing the inclusion of links directly within the text of the AI summaries. Early results from this experiment have been promising, with Google noting that this approach has driven higher traffic to publisher sites.
The news of Google’s AI expansion comes amid other legal challenges for the tech giant. Last week, a US judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly on search, paving the way for a potential trial that could result in the breakup of its parent company, Alphabet.