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The
search giant made AI Overviews - which are displayed atop a
search results page before traditional links to the Web -
available to all U.S. users in May after spending one year
trialing a limited earlier version.
The feature was widely panned after screenshots of factually
inaccurate answers circulated across the internet, such as a
pizza recipe that listed glue as an ingredient and an answer
claiming that former U.S. President Barack Obama is Muslim.
Google acknowledged the "odd and erroneous overviews" and
announced updates to the product in a blog post in late May.
These updates added restrictions to which queries would display
AI answers and curbed user-generated content from websites like
Reddit from serving as source material for answers.
"I have enough evidence to say that quality is only improving,"
Hema Budaraju, a senior director of product at Google told
Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. She pointed to data Google
collects internally, which showed that users with access to the
feature reported higher levels of satisfaction and searched for
longer queries than users who did not.
AI Overviews is now coming to the Brazil, India, Indonesia,
Japan, Mexico and Britain, in local languages such as Hindi and
Portuguese.
Google is also adding hyperlinks to the feature. Websites will
be displayed to the right side of the AI-generated answer. The
company is also internally testing a further update that would
add links directly within the text of the overview.
The updates come amid concerns voiced by the media industry
about the possibility of losing out on referral traffic from
consumers who clicked through to publishers' websites. Budaraju
said the new update would have a "three-way benefit" for Google,
consumers and publishers.
Last week a U.S. judge ruled Google had an illegal monopoly on
search, clearing the way for a trial that could force the
breakup of Alphabet. AI advances from rivals like
Microsoft-backed OpenAI could pose an even bigger threat.
(Reporting by Kenrick Cai in San Francisco; editing by Miral
Fahmy)
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