Google is said to have secretly removed the AI Overview feature for certain medical queries, after the Guardian newspaper published survey results showing that AI-generated answers could cause serious misunderstandings for users.
According to The Guardian, when users search for questions related to liver function tests, such as "what is the normal scope of liver blood tests?", Google once displayed an AI Overview with general figures.
This information does not take into account important factors such as age, gender, race or nationality, which are variables that can greatly affect medical test results.
This poses a risk of causing users to misunderstand their health status, even subjectively believing that the result is normal when in reality it is not.
After the investigation was published, The Guardian said that the overall results of AI no longer appeared with specific questions such as "what is the normal scope of liver blood test?" or "what is the normal scope of liver function test?".
However, the newspaper also found that some other variations of the query, such as "LFT reference scope" or "LFT test reference scope", can still activate the AI-generated summary.
In the actual test performed a few hours after The Guardian published the article, the above queries no longer showed an AI overview in the usual search results.
However, Google still allows users to ask these same questions in the "AI Mode", which is a separate feature.
Responding to The Guardian, a Google spokesman said the company did not comment on removing specific results in searches.
However, Google affirms that it is making efforts to implement overall improvements to the system. According to this spokesman, an internal health expert team reviewed the queries mentioned by the Guardian and said that, in many cases, the information is not misleading and is supported by high-quality websites.
However, the removal move is still positively assessed by many health organizations. Ms. Vanessa Hebditch, Communications and Policy Director of British Liver Trust, said this is "great news", but also expressed deeper concern.
According to her, the problem is not only in a few specific queries but in how Google deploys AI in general in the health sector.
If Google simply turns off the AI overview for some individual results without addressing systemic risks, then concerns about health information created by AI remain," Hebditch emphasized.
Previously, Google announced new features to improve the search experience related to healthcare, including upgrading specialized AI models.
