Google Search AI Overviews / Gemini AI Overview

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Part of a series on Google Search Enshittification. [View Related Entries]

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About

Google Search AI Overviews, also known as Gemini AI Overview, refers to a feature added by Google to its Search product that summarizes the answer to a user's question or query when searching the internet using artificial intelligence rather than serving links to websites that answer the question. Users were broadly unhappy with the new feature when it was rolled out to most U.S. users in May 2024, spawning memes and posts about the low quality of some of the AI overviews that Google produced. Criticism of the AI overviews in mid-2024 also coincided with general dissatisfaction with Google Search as a product.

History

On May 14th, 2024, Google announced the gradual rollout of AI-generated Search overviews first to users in the United States and then to users worldwide. Google claimed that the rollout of AI overview meant users were "visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions."^[1]

However, the initial public reception of the AI overviews was mixed, with many complaining about the feature or searching for ways to remove and disable it. Numerous users on social media reported dissatisfaction with the new overview results, as did many media outlets.

For example, on May 24th, 2024, Danny Goodwin compiled a series of press stories covering negative user reactions to Google Search AI Overview for the outlet SearchEngineLand (seen below).^[4]

In a May 22nd interview, The Verge journalist Nilay Patel sat down with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and showed him an AI overview search on his phone. Pichai defended Google's product, arguing that the sample search Patel had done for "best chromebook" wasn't truly a question, and so the user had not requested answers from Google. Pichai's defense of the AI Overview mirrored other Google employees and spokespeople at the time, who stood up to defend the product.

A TikTok video of their interaction (seen below, left) made by Patel's podcast Decoder, was posted on May 22nd, 2024, and earned over 1.5 million views and 54,000 likes in the course of two days.^[2] On May 16th, TikToker @marketingwithsam argued that Google was going through an "identity crisis," receiving over 232,000 views and 21,000 likes in a week (seen below, right).^[3]

Features

The AI overviews generate a few sentences answering a question and then place links to sources, ranging from online publications and forums to YouTube videos and other content, underneath the AI overview section, which is displayed at the top of searches.

A series of sponsored ads then accompany the AI overview before organic search results from websites are included. The overview appears to combine AI-generated text with quotes taken from sources online.

Highlights

Following the initial rollout to the U.S. in mid-May 2024, many users on social media posted screenshots of erroneous and funny answers that the AI overview generated for their searches. For example, on May 23rd, 2024, user @napalmtrees posted to X a screenshot (seen below) of the AI Overview informing them that dogs can safely be left in cars, earning over 51,000 likes in the course of a day.^[5]

Similarly, X user @heavenrend posted a screenshot on May 22nd of the AI overview informing him to add glue to cheese in order to make it more sticky, earning over 106,000 likes in two days (seen below).^[6] Many of the early posts mocking the AI overview feature were quote-posts of an optimistic take on artificial intelligence by Steven Levy, an editor at WIRED.

Various Examples

Google Search Enshittification

Google Search Enshittification refers to the user experience and market situation of Google Search in the 2020s, an era that saw significant changes to the core Google Search product and a marked decline in market share and usage, as well as an increase in complaints and negativity toward the product online. During this period, memes and posts by internet users about Google Search expressed frustration, arguing the search engine was no longer useful and had become clogged with too many advertisements, AI-generated spam and low-quality or unhelpful results.

Slurpy Faggi and Dr. Butto

Slurpy Faggi and Dr. Butto are two characters supposedly identified by Google Search's AI Overview feature as the first two gay characters in the Star Wars franchise. The false factoid appeared in a viral screenshot shortly after the rollout of Google Gemini search summaries in late May 2024, leading to jokes about the two invented characters. However, it is likely the screenshot was a parody mocking AI Overview's propensity to offer false information and not a genuine response given by Google's AI.