{"id":21693,"date":"2026-01-24T17:37:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T16:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/24\/how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T17:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T16:37:27","slug":"how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/24\/how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"How the \u2018confident authority\u2019 of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Experts say tool can give \u2018completely wrong\u2019 medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jan\/24\/google-ai-overviews-youtube-medical-citations-study\">AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site, study suggests<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world\u2019s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Sundar Pichai, Google\u2019s chief executive, first set out the company\u2019s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google\u2019s core product in a quarter of a century. By July 2025, the technology had expanded to more than 200 countries in 40 languages, with 2 billion people served AI Overviews each month.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2026\/jan\/24\/how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/0fd9215aeefc347883d2e12f7e2ac337bc58c231\/0_147_4000_3198\/master\/4000.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=fc74b1fc34e5bb3f6fa7feb89ef1830f\" title=\"How the \u2018confident authority\u2019 of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk\" \/>Experts say tool can give \u2018completely wrong\u2019 medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm<br \/>\n\u2022 AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site, study suggests<br \/>\nDo I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world\u2019s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.<br \/>\nSundar Pichai, Google\u2019s chief executive, first set out the company\u2019s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google\u2019s core product in a quarter of a century. By July 2025, the technology had expanded to more than 200 countries in 40 languages, with 2 billion people served AI Overviews each month. Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experts say tool can give \u2018completely wrong\u2019 medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm \u2022 AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site, study suggests Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/24\/how-the-confident-authority-of-google-ai-overviews-is-putting-public-health-at-risk\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How the \u2018confident authority\u2019 of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":21694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}