AI Overviews were announced at the Google I/O event a few days ago exclusively to users in the US with the promise of higher satisfaction with its search results by suggesting info and webpages closest to the search query. This new feature was a result of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), launched last year.
In the last few days, people have shared screenshots of inaccurate and misleading results after using the new feature. Liz Reid, VP, Head of Google Search, has responded to the feedback in a blog post and detailed next steps that are being taken.
The post explains how AI Overviews work and informs that it works differently than a chatbot or Large Language Models.
“While AI Overviews are powered by a customized language model, the model is integrated with our core web ranking systems and designed to carry out traditional “search” tasks, like identifying relevant, high-quality results from our index. That’s why AI Overviews don’t just provide text output, but include relevant links so people can explore further.” the blog post informs.
The tech giant also added that AI Overviews does not hallucinate like chatbot and when it gets anything wrong, it is because of misinterpreting queries or nuance of language or simply not having better information, a problem Google said can arise for simple search features as well.
