Google’s AI overview feature has come under criticism from users over the past couple of weeks. In response, the American tech giant came out with a statement addressing the issues and assured that the company has “made more than a dozen technical improvements” to the system.
During the recently concluded Google I/O, the company announced that they will make the AI Overview feature available to every person in the US. This feature provides AI-generated answers to any inquiry made by the user. The purpose of AI Overview was to enhance user experience and provide better search results.
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Since then, users have reported multiple misleading or outright incorrect responses generated by the AI. Many people have posted these bizarre search results on X (formerly Twitter). This has predictably led to scrutiny about the quality of Google’s products. Experts have also questioned Google’s ability to keep pace with its competitors in the generative AI race.
Google responded via a blog release, saying, “In the last week, people on social media have shared some odd and erroneous overviews. We hold ourselves to a high standard, as do our users, so we expect and appreciate the feedback, and take it seriously. Given the attention AI Overviews received, we wanted to explain what happened and the steps we’ve taken.”.
The post goes on to elaborate on some of the corrections it has made. These include better detection mechanisms for nonsensical queries, limiting the use of user-generated content, and restricting queries that were not helpful.