Google’s parent company, Alphabet (GOOL.O), announced on Thursday that it is expanding its AI-generated search summaries to six additional countries. This comes just two months after the company scaled back some features due to issues with the initial launch.
In May, Google rolled out AI Overviews—a feature that displays AI-generated summaries at the top of search results—nationwide in the U.S. following a year of limited testing. However, the launch was met with criticism after screenshots of inaccurate responses, such as a pizza recipe listing glue as an ingredient and a false claim about former U.S. President Barack Obama’s religion, circulated online.
Google acknowledged the mistakes and announced updates in a late May blog post, adding new restrictions on which queries would generate AI answers and excluding user-generated content from platforms like Reddit as source material.
READ MORE — Google Teams Up with Selena Gomez to Support Teen Mental Health Initiatives in Schools
Hema Budaraju, a senior director of product at Google, told Reuters on Wednesday that internal data shows the quality of the feature is improving. Users with access to AI Overviews reported higher satisfaction levels and engaged in longer, more specific searches compared to those without the feature.
The AI Overviews feature will now be available in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, with support for local languages such as Portuguese and Hindi.
Google is also enhancing the feature by adding more hyperlinks, with websites now displayed on the right side of the AI-generated answers. The company is internally testing an update that will embed links directly within the text of the overview, aiming to “prioritize approaches that drive traffic to relevant websites,” according to a Thursday blog post.
These updates come amid growing concerns from the media industry about the potential loss of referral traffic due to AI-generated search features. Budaraju emphasized that the new update would provide a “three-way benefit” for Google, consumers, and publishers.
This expansion occurs against the backdrop of a U.S. judge’s recent ruling that Google holds an illegal monopoly on search, potentially leading to a breakup of Alphabet. Meanwhile, AI advancements from competitors like Microsoft-backed OpenAI could present an even greater challenge to Google’s dominance.
