Hajra Naz
Following an investigation by The Guardian that highlighted misleading information in Google AI Overviews for certain health queries, Google appears to have removed the AI summaries for some of those searches.
The Guardian report noted that asking questions like “What is the normal range for liver blood tests” returned numbers that did not consider factors such as nationality, sex, ethnicity, or age. This could have misled users into thinking their results were normal when they were not.
According to the report, AI Overviews have now been removed for queries including “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” and “what is the normal range for liver function tests.” However, variations like “lft reference range” or “lft test reference range” may still produce AI-generated summaries.
When tested several hours after the story was published, these queries no longer displayed AI Overviews. Google still offered the option to use AI Mode, and in some cases, the top search result was the Guardian article about the removal.
Read More: Google is testing to combine AI Overviews with AI Mode
A Google spokesperson told The Guardian that the company does not comment on individual removals within Search, but it continues to work on broad improvements. The spokesperson added that an internal team of clinicians reviewed the queries flagged by the Guardian and concluded that “in many instances, the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites.”
TechCrunch has reached out to Google for further comment. Last year, Google introduced new features aimed at improving search for healthcare, including enhanced overviews and health-focused AI models.
Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Trust, called the removal “excellent news.” She added, however, that the bigger concern remains the overall reliability of AI Overviews for health queries, noting that simply shutting off the summaries for individual searches does not address the broader issue.
