Google has restricted its AI Overviews feature to a number of health-related search queries, following an investigation by The Guardian that found the AI-powered overviews displayed potentially misleading information.
As reported by Tech Crunch on Monday, The Guardian previously revealed that when users asked "what is the normal range for a liver blood test?", Google displayed reference numbers that didn't take into account factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, or nationality. This was deemed potentially misleading to users.
The Guardian later reported that the AI summary no longer appears for that query. However, other query variations, such as " lft reference range /normal range for liver function tests," still generate AI summaries.
Follow-up monitoring showed that within hours of the report's publication, those queries were no longer returning AI Overviews, although Google still offered the option to ask similar questions through its AI Mode feature. In some cases, the top results instead led to The Guardian's article about the removal of the AI overviews.
A Google spokesperson said the company does not comment on individual removals in search services, but continues to make broad improvements to its AI services.
