Google removes AI Overviews for certain medical queries

Next an investigation by the Guardian which showed that Google AI Overviews provided misleading information in response to certain health-related questions, the company appears to have removed the AI ​​Overviews for some of those questions.

For example, The Guardian initially reported that when users asked ‘what is the normal range for liver blood tests’, they were shown figures that did not take into account factors such as nationality, gender, ethnicity or age, potentially leading them to think their results were healthy when they were not.

Now says the Guardian AI overviews have been removed from the results for ‘what is the normal range for liver blood tests’ and ‘what is the normal range for liver function tests’. However, it turned out that variations on these queries, such as ‘lft reference range’ or ‘lft test reference range’, could still lead to AI-generated summaries.

When I tried those questions this morning (just hours after the Guardian published its story) none of them resulted in seeing AI overviews, although Google still gave me the option to ask the same question in AI mode. In several cases, the best outcome was actually the Guardian article on the takedown.

A Google spokesperson told the Guardian that the company “does not comment on individual removals within Search,” but that it is working on “broad improvements.” The spokesperson also said that an internal team of doctors reviewed the questions highlighted by The Guardian and found that “in many cases the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites.”

TechCrunch has contacted Google for additional comment. Last year, the company announced new features aimed at improving Google Search for healthcare use cases, including improved overviews and health-focused AI models.

Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Trust, told the Guardian that the removal is “excellent news”, but added: “Our bigger concern with all of this is that it is a single search result and Google can simply turn off AI summaries for that, but the bigger issue of AI summaries for health is not addressed.”