Google launched AI Overviews in Search in the US back in May, and the results haven’t been amazing – the feature notoriously recommended eating rocks and putting glue on pizza. Google still hasn’t explained why it thought it a good idea to replace the old, non-AI-branded overviews for search queries with this new, AI-branded but inferior feature, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out: everything has to be AI these days, regardless of actual usability.
So, with that in mind, today Google has announced the triumphant expansion of AI Overviews to six more countries, following the rather disastrous experiment in the US. The new places that will have to make do with AI Overviews replacing the old AI-free (but much more accurate and reliable) overviews are the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil. The expansion comes alongside local language support in each of these countries.
While AI Overviews may hallucinate a lot (and consider satire to be reality), Google is happy to let us know that it’s seen “higher engagement from younger users, aged 18-24, when they use Search with AI Overviews”. To that we can only say AI Overviews are probably better than TikTok. Google also says that “people prefer using Search with AI Overviews, and they find their search results more helpful”. Whether they’re more accurate doesn’t seem to be a concern at all.
Anyway, there is now a right-hand link display for AI Overviews on desktop (which is also accessible on mobile by tapping the site icons in the upper right). Google is also testing the addition of links to relevant web pages directly within the text of AI Overviews, to make it easier to go and check out what you’re interested in.
A new experiment in Search Labs lets you save a specific AI Overview for future reference. You just need to tap the new Save button that appears underneath your AI Overview. Then, you can see your saved ones by tapping on your profile icon and navigating to your Interests page. This is only available for English in the US, and you need to enroll in the “AI Overviews and more” experiment in Search Labs first.
Finally, on some AI Overviews there will be an option to simplify the language with one tap, which could come in handy if you’re new to a topic and want an easier way to digest information. There’s a huge lost opportunity here for Google to have called this button “Dumb it down, please”.
