After being questioned by the British "Guardian" investigation, Google has removed the AI Overviews function from some medical search results pages related to liver function. An investigation by The Guardian pointed out that Google AI Overview gave potentially misleading information when answering certain health questions, raising concerns about the safety of its medical scenarios.
According to a previous report by The Guardian, when a user asks "what is the normal range for liver blood tests," the AI overview given by Google will directly present a set of values without distinguishing between important factors such as nationality, gender, race, and age. Experts worry that this "one-size-fits-all" reference range may lead some users to mistakenly believe that their test results are normal, thereby delaying medical treatment or ignoring potential risks.
In the latest development, the Guardian said that Google has removed AI overviews from related query results such as "normal range of liver blood tests" and "normal range of liver function tests" (what is the normal range for liver function tests). However, the investigation also found that slight variations on the same type of questions, such as entering "lft reference range" or "lft test reference range", may still trigger AI-generated summary answers.
TechCrunch reporters tested it themselves hours after the latest Guardian report was published and found that the AI Overviews module no longer appeared in the search results page for either the original question or its variations. In multiple tests, Google will still provide an entrance to "ask questions in AI mode", but the default search results are mainly traditional links. The first result of many of the queries is the Guardian's report on Google's removal of the AI overview itself.
Regarding the specific removal behavior, Google told the Guardian that the company would not comment on "individual removal cases" in search, but would continue to "make extensive improvements." A Google spokesperson also revealed that an internal team of clinicians has reviewed the relevant queries named by the Guardian and believes that "in many cases, the information is not inaccurate and is supported by high-quality websites."
Google has been approached for further comment on this matter. The report recalled that last year, Google announced a series of improvements aimed at optimizing the search experience in medical scenarios, including strengthening the overview presentation of health searches and introducing more specialized health-related AI models.
Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Trust, told the Guardian that Google’s removal of the relevant AI overview was “good news.” But she also emphasized that the bigger concern is that the outside world is currently "nitpicking about a single search result, and Google can quickly stop the bleeding by turning off the AI overview of individual queries, but it has not really touched the overall issue of health AI overview."