Google removes AI Overviews feature for some medical queries

the next Investigation conducted by The Guardian newspaper After Google found AI Overviews providing misleading information in response to some health-related queries, the company appears to have removed AI Overviews for some of these 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 take into account factors such as nationality, gender, race or age, which could lead them to believe their results were healthy when they were not.

Now, says the Guardian AI overview has been removed From the results of “What is the normal range for liver blood tests” and “What is the normal range for liver function tests”. However, I found that variations of those queries, such as “LFT reference range” or “LFT reference range,” can still result in AI-generated summaries.

When I tried these queries this morning — several hours after The Guardian published its story — none of them resulted in an AI overview view, although Google still gave me the option to ask the same query in AI mode. In many cases, the first result was a Guardian article about the takedown.

A Google spokesperson told The Guardian that the company “does not comment on individual removals within search,” but is working to “make broad improvements.” The spokesperson also said an internal team of doctors reviewed the inquiries highlighted by the Guardian and found that “in many cases, the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Google for additional comment. Last year the company announced New features aimed at improving Google Search for healthcare use casesincluding improved overviews and health-focused AI models.

Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Foundation, told The Guardian that the removal is “excellent news”, but added: “Our biggest concern with all of this is that it’s selecting one search result and Google can just turn off AI overviews for that, but it doesn’t address the larger issue of AI overviews for health.”