All posts tagged: Overviews

AI Overviews are coming to your Gmail at work

AI Overviews are coming to your Gmail at work

Published by skeptic

During its Google Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, the company announced a slew of Workspace-focused updates, including the addition of its AI Overviews feature to Gmail. The feature, which today uses AI to summarize Google Search results, will now do the same for Gmail users in the workplace. According to Google, this will allow Gmail users to ask questions in search using natural language and then get concise answers without having to open and read different emails. The company suggests the feature could be used to ask business-related questions about topics typically shared in emails, like those about performance improvements, project milestones, invoices, comments on decks, trip details, and more with straightforward answers. The AI Overview will create an instant summary pulled from across multiple emails and conversations. While not everyone prefers to have AI as their first step to finding an answer, it is rapidly becoming the norm, both within Google’s products and elsewhere on the web. In this case, Google says the AI Overviews in Gmail will be the default setting if the …

Study: Google’s AI Overviews show millions of wrong answers every hour

Study: Google’s AI Overviews show millions of wrong answers every hour

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Aside from the hallucinations, immense energy requirements, and potentially negative mental health effects, generative artificial intelligence still has an issue with accuracy. However, that hasn’t stopped major tech companies like Google from rolling out features like AI search summaries to its users. Most of the results seem fine at first glance and usually feature multiple source citations, but that doesn’t mean the product works perfectly. A recent study reported by the New York Times found that Google’s “AI Overview” offers correct and reputably sourced summaries 9 out of 10 times. But while 90 percent sounds like a passing grade, the failure rate adds up in a matter of minutes. Given that the company will process over five trillion searches in 2026, the ensuing math means AI Overview is churning out tens of millions of questionable answers each hour. That’s hundreds of thousands of errors every minute. What’s more, it’s difficult to truly assess AI Overview’s accuracy. An initially wrong …

Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization

Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Google’s AI Overviews are peddling misinformation on a scale that may be virtually unprecedented in human history. A recent analysis conducted by the AI startup Oumi at the behest of The New York Times found that the AI-generated summaries, which appear above Google search results, are accurate around 91 percent of the time.  In a sense, that may sound like an impressive figure. But here’s an even more impressive one: five trillion. That’s roughly the number of search queries that Google processes every year, translating to tens of millions of wrong answers that the AI Overviews are providing every hour — and hundreds of thousands every minute, the analysis calculated. In other words, Google has created a misinformation crisis. Studies have shown that people tend to trust what an AI tells them without question, with one report finding that only 8 percent of users actually double checked an AI’s answer. Another experiment found that users still listened to …

NotebookLM Feature Guide : Cinematic Video Overviews

NotebookLM Feature Guide : Cinematic Video Overviews

Published by skeptic

Google’s NotebookLM now includes cinematic video overviews, offering a way to convert detailed content into structured visual summaries. Available for Ultra subscribers, this feature uses AI to align the tone and complexity of the video with the source material, such as academic papers or business strategies. According to Universe of AI, the process integrates narration with visuals to support diverse learning styles and improve understanding of intricate topics. You’ll learn how to use cinematic video overviews to simplify dense documents into accessible formats. Explore how the Gemini AI models enhance video quality through self-correction and adaptive generation. Additionally, see how this feature supports professionals like educators and consultants by streamlining workflows and improving communication. Understanding Cinematic Video Overviews TL;DR Key Takeaways : Google’s NotebookLM has introduced “cinematic video overviews,” a feature that transforms complex materials like research papers and PDFs into visually engaging video summaries, enhancing accessibility and comprehension. The feature uses advanced AI, powered by Google’s Gemini models, to generate unique visuals and narration tailored to the tone and purpose of the original content. …

Evidence Grows That Google’s AI Overviews Have Eviscerated the Media Industry

Evidence Grows That Google’s AI Overviews Have Eviscerated the Media Industry

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Media workers aren’t so much being replaced by AI systems as fed to one: Google’s gluttonous AI Overviews, which summarize articles and present them to users in one easy-to-read digest. But while users might be shaving precious seconds from their queries, online media publications are being roiled by the massive drop-off in clicks. That web traffic, SEO firm Growtika found, has dropped off significantly following the advent of Google’s AI Overviews. The firm looked at data from Ahrefs tracking web traffic to 10 major tech outlets from early 2024 to early 2026. At their peak, the media companies brought in 112 million site visits per month from Google users in the US. By January of this year, that number was down to a little under 50 million — with some outlets losing over 90 percent of their traffic since the new feature rolled out. While some publications fared much worse than others, none of them are thriving. Mashable …

How to Hide Google’s AI Overviews From Your Search Results

How to Hide Google’s AI Overviews From Your Search Results

Published by skeptic

Going online in 2026 means subjecting yourself to a relentless bombardment of generative AI tools. How about a few AI agents to get you started? Do you want to use this chatbot sidebar? Would you like every search query to be answered with an AI summary? While there’s no off switch to avoid this smorgasbord of AI tools entirely, there is one keyboard trick you can use to dodge Google’s AI Overviews for a brief respite. If you don’t want to see an AI-generated summarization of webpage links when you use Google Search, you can type “–ai” at the end of your query. It’s an option WIRED readers highlighted under a recent article about scams found in Google’s AI Overviews. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed using this nifty addendum over the past week, and I wish Google offered a permanent toggle with similar zapping capabilities. “People find Search more helpful with AI Overviews, and they’re coming back to search more as a result,” a Google spokesperson tells WIRED. “We offer a ‘web’ filter to see links only, …

Fact-checking Google’s AI Overviews just got a little easier – here’s how

Fact-checking Google’s AI Overviews just got a little easier – here’s how

Published by skeptic

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Google’s AI now shows you the original sources via pop-up windows. The new option works in both AI Overviews and AI Mode. Just click the link in the pop-up to view the source’s website. I often turn to Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode when I run a search on a particular topic. The resulting Gemini-based summaries can cut to the chase by providing the gist of the information I seek. But there’s one big downside. AI can be wrong. For that reason, I never rely solely on AI; I always double-check the original sources used to create the summary. And now Google has made that process easier. Also: How to get rid of AI Overviews in Google Search: 4 easy ways \In a recent post on X, Robby Stein, product VP for Google Search, announced a new feature designed to benefit all Google users. With both AI Overviews and AI Mode, groups of links now automatically appear …

Google’s AI Overviews Can Scam You. Here’s How to Stay Safe

Google’s AI Overviews Can Scam You. Here’s How to Stay Safe

Published by skeptic

These days, rather than showing you the traditional list of links when you run a search query, Google is intent on throwing up AI Overviews instead: synthesized summaries of information scraped off the web, with some word-prediction magic added, and packaged together in a way to sound as accurate and reliable as possible. We’ve written before about some of the problems with these AI Overviews, which regularly contain mistakes or nonsense, and of course rip off the work of the human writers who actually know the answers to the questions you’re putting into Google. There’s another problem though—these AI answers can actually be dangerous. As with every other new technology through history, scams are now making their way into AI Overviews as well, apparently injecting Google’s AI answers with fraudulent phone numbers that you shouldn’t trust. Here’s what’s happening, and how you can make sure you stay safe. How AI Overview Scams Work It’s a good idea not to trust AI for contact details.David Nield Both The Washington Post and Digital Trends have spotted instances …

CMA says UK publishers should be allowed to opt out of Google AI Overviews

CMA says UK publishers should be allowed to opt out of Google AI Overviews

Published by Sam Flores

Google AI Overviews shown in front of a Google webpage. Picture: Shutterstock/DIA TV The UK’s competition watchdog has said publishers should be able to opt out of their content being used in Google’s AI Overviews without it affecting how they appear in search engine results. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said the way Google decides how content is ranked in search results, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, should be made “fair and transparent”. The CMA’s proposals come after it designated Google as a tech platform with “strategic market status” for regulation in October. Google, on which more than 90% of online searches in the UK are carried out, is the first tech platform to face conduct requirements under new powers in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The proposals are now out for consultation until 25 February after which a final decision will be taken. Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said the proposals would “give UK businesses and consumers more choice and control over how they interact with Google’s …

Google removes AI Overviews for certain medical queries

Google removes AI Overviews for certain medical queries

Published by skeptic

Following an investigation by the Guardian that found Google AI Overviews offering misleading information in response to certain health-related queries, the company appears to have removed the AI Overviews for some of those queries. For example, the Guardian initially reported that when users asked “what is the normal range for liver blood tests,” they would be presented with numbers that did not account for factors such as nationality, sex, ethnicity, or age, potentially leading them to think their results were healthy when they were not. Now, the Guardian says AI Overviews have been removed from the results for “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” and “what is the normal range for liver function tests.” However, it found that variations on those queries, such as “lft reference range” or “lft test reference range,” could still lead to AI-generated summaries. When I tried those queries this morning — several hours after the Guardian published its story — none of them resulted in seeing AI Overviews, though Google still gave me the option to ask …