Google removes AI Overviews for health queries after accuracy concerns

Google has reportedly removed some AI Overviews for health-related questions following an investigation that found that some of the information was misleading.

AI Overviews are summaries generated by artificial intelligence that provide information in response to a topic or question at the top of the search results.​

An investigation by the Guardian newspaper found that some of the summaries contained inaccurate health information, putting people at risk of harm.

The newspaper found that AI Overviews served up masses of numbers with little context in response to questions such as “what is the normal range for liver blood tests?” and “what is the normal range for liver function tests?” The responses also didn’t take into account any variances that could come based on nationality, sex, ethnicity, or age.

A Google search result for both questions came up with a featured snippet, a paragraph extracted from the most relevant website to the user’s question at the top of the search results.

For both questions, Google chose to extract the range of healthy levels of various types of substances found in the liver in its snippet, such as alanine transaminase (ALT), which regulates energy production, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), which detects damaged blood cells, and alkaline phosphatase (ALP), which helps break down proteins.

Google extracted the numbers from Max Healthcare, an Indian for-profit hospital chain in New Delhi, the Guardian found.

Featured snippets are different from AI Overviews because the text in the snippet is not generated by AI.

The Guardian’s investigation found that variations on those questions, such as “[liver function test] lft reference range” or “lft test reference range,” would still generate AI summaries. Liver function tests are blood tests that measure proteins and enzymes to check how well the liver is working.

Google reportedly advised people with pancreatic cancer to avoid high-fat foods, which experts told the Guardian is not a good recommendation because it could increase the risk of patients dying from the disease.

The Guardian’s investigation comes as experts sound the alarm on how AI chatbots “hallucinate,” meaning they invent false answers when they don’t have the correct information.

Euronews Next reached out to Google to ask whether it had removed AI Overviews from some health queries, but did not receive an immediate reply.

Google announced this weekend that it was adding AI Overviews to its email service, Gmail.

The new feature lets users ask questions and receive an answer about their emails instead of searching through them with a keyword search.