The Curious Case of GOOGLE's AI Overviews: A Quirky Dive Into Search Results

Search engines such as Google exist to help us navigate the ever-expanding chaos of the internet. Google has always tried to innovate in the ways that we search, digest, view, and make sense of the endless noise of online. And sometimes – that noise is the story. Google AI Overviews had their champion – but not necessarily the people who read them When Google AI Overviews launched, they changed the way we read search result summaries. In doing so, they changed the conversation about the reliability of AI to help us determine fact from fiction.

Why Are GOOGLE’s AI Overviews Stirring the Pot?

At the centre of this storm lies Google’s use of so-called AI Overviews, which the tech giant has been developing and using to shorten search experiences by attempting to summarise the gist of your search results. Created to save you time by explaining the substance of your destination, they have in fact, often to hilarious and worrying effect, gone in the opposite direction. Recently, Google AI has advised people to try glue as a pizza topping, suggested that you might want to eat an undercooked chicken, and recommended a bewildering range of dubious and sometimes downright dangerous health advice. It seems that Google’s AI has never learned the concept of wit, or perhaps the editors have failed to correct it.

Is AI Misunderstanding the Assignment?

Reddit, a hub of crowdsourced wisdom via manwhocodes, manwhocodes AND ALSO LOLS, has provided some of the best winding-road directions systems for Google’s AI, which has occasionally resulted in some of the wildest summary results. The thing is, Google’s AI can’t tell the difference between good directions and satire – or really, good directions and general silliness – and sometimes points users toward malware websites, or ‘facts’ culled from trusted online satire publications such as The Onion.

Is GOOGLE Feeling Lucky with AI Overviews?

In their echo of Google’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, which would load the user directly on to the first search hit, the AI Overviews seem to simplify that process – even if the experience is more like a spinning roulette wheel than the can-do certainty of an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ jackpot. Powered by Google’s own huge investment in AI, these efforts might be about to get a whole lot more frantic, because with its attempts to decipher not-entirely-humorous memes and allegedly ‘fake news’ piles, the AI, well, seems kind of stuck.

Is the Charm of GOOGLE's AI Overviews Waning?

Even so, despite the amusing pitfalls, it’s hard to imagine that Google will drop its AI Overviews altogether. If anything, the company has long had a philosophy of innovation and iteration – whatever success Google has had with these tools, it’s sure to refine them until the AI becomes more accurate and reliable. Still, the initial response shows that users prefer the clean, brief, and less capriciously misinterpretive presentation of the traditional layout.

Are We Heading Towards a Renaissance in Search?

And with Google’s continuing efforts to improve its AI Overviews, it’s hard not to wonder: will AI ever be able to understand context, tone and honesty in our digital utterances? Or are we doomed to a digital future of amusing – but confounding – AI bloopers? Google’s ostentatious AI Overviews no doubt represent the difficulties that artificial intelligence will continue to have in grasping the subtleties of human communication.

But all relationships start with trust, so if humans are going to be able to have relationships with machines such as Google, they are going to have to learn to trust them. That’s the real challenge for Google’s AI Overviews; as the technology improves over the coming years, so too will the challenge of encouraging people to trust the AI-curated content. This article is part of our ongoing Future of Humanity series, exploring new technology and its potential to help or harm our wonderful world.

About GOOGLE

Although it’s been several years since Google’s AI Overviews debuted, this technology behemoth, and by extension, the rest of digital culture, continues to evolve. From the early days of Google as a simple search engine to its current role as a global leader in technological and AI innovation, we see that Google’s AI Overviews are a part of the dynamic interplay between human psychology and technological advances. Whether Google’s AI Overviews soar to new digital heights, or whether they become cautionary tales in our use of AI, remains just as uncertain today as the day they were published. What is certain, however, is that whatever comes next for digital culture, Google will still be at the cutting edge.