AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries Google supplies for certain Google Search queries, will soon be able to handle “more complex topics” and “multimodal” and “multi-step” searches, the company says, including advanced math questions and coding problems.
The expanded capabilities are driven by the newly launched Gemini 2.0 model, which Google says should also deliver improvements in search speed and quality.
A limited test of the new AI Overviews feature will begin this week, with a broad rollout to follow early next year.
“Our AI Overviews now reach 1 billion people, enabling them to ask entirely new types of questions — quickly becoming one of our most popular Search features ever,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post provided to TechCrunch. “We’ll continue to bring AI Overviews to more countries and languages over the next year.”
The increasing prominence of AI in Google’s core search product is part of the company’s effort to keep users from shifting to alternatives like Perplexity and ChatGPT Search. These so-called AI-powered search engines use AI to answer many of the questions traditionally searched for, including those about math and programming.
Since its launch this spring, AI Overviews has been the subject of much controversy, going viral for its dubious statements and questionable advice (like recommending adding glue to pizza). A recent report from SE Ranking, an SEO platform, found that AI Overviews cites websites that “aren’t entirely reliable or evidence-based,” including outdated studies and paid product listings.
The chief issue is that AI Overviews has a tough time discerning, occasionally, whether a source of information is fact, fiction, satire or serious. Over the past few months, Google has changed how AI Overviews works, limiting answers related to current events and health topics. But the company doesn’t claim it’s perfect.
Regardless, Google says AI Overviews has led to a boost in Search engagement, especially among people aged 18 to 24 — a key demographic for the company.
Google recently took steps to monetize AI Overviews by adding ads on mobile for certain “relevant” queries, much to the chagrin of publishers who say the feature is negatively affecting their traffic. Google says it continues to take publishers’ concerns into account in workshopping its AI search experiences.
AI Overviews is a target in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, which seeks to break up what a judge ruled to be an illegal monopoly in search. The DOJ is asking that Google let sites opt out of AI Overviews without being penalized in Google Search results.
