Google announced that it will be expanding its AI Overviews feature to six additional countries, including India, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. This feature provides summarized answers to complex questions from the web and presents them at the top of traditional search results. It has been less than three months since AI Overviews were launched in the United States, and Google plans to roll out support for local languages as well as English.
Hema Budaraju, senior director of product management for Search at Google, emphasized the challenges of ensuring quality across various languages at the scale of the web. To address potential issues, Google plans to conduct language-specific testing for AI Overviews and implement red-teaming techniques to stress-test the system against potential bad actors.
One major change is the addition of prominent links to sources on the right-hand side of each AI-generated answer, making it easier for users to access the original websites. Google is also testing the inclusion of links directly within the text of AI Overviews for users who sign up for Search Labs.
In addition to these expansions, Search Labs users will have access to some new features, including the ability to save a specific AI Overview for future reference and an option to simplify the language of AI-generated answers.
All of these efforts are part of Google’s commitment to improving the quality and usability of AI Overviews while addressing concerns from publishers about potential traffic loss to AI-generated content.
