Expanding into six more countries from Thursday, including India, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, Google is broadening the reach of AI Overviews, a feature that summarizes answers to complex queries from the web and presents them at the top of search results in various languages in addition to English. Following its initial launch in the United States less than three months ago, where it made headlines for telling people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizzas, Google is implementing language-specific testing and red-teaming to avoid similar incidents in foreign countries like Hindi and Japanese. Google is committed to quickly addressing any issues that may arise and has implemented guardrails, including displaying links to sources alongside AI-generated answers to increase transparency. Additionally, Google is testing the inclusion of links directly within the text of AI Overviews, which has shown positive results in driving more traffic to actual websites. Users of Google’s Search Labs platform can also access features such as saving specific AI Overviews for future reference and simplifying the language of AI-generated answers, ultimately working to address concerns from publishers and enhance the overall user experience.
