Google Search in Canada gets AI Overviews, can now tell you to put glue on pizza

Google is bringing its much-maligned AI Overviews to Google Search in Canada after a limited test.

According to a Google blog post, the search giant tested AI Overviews — previously dubbed Search Generative Experience, or SGE — on a “small percentage” of Canadian Search traffic.

“We’ve gotten positive feedback from this test and we’re excited to share that, starting this week, we are beginning the full rollout of AI Overviews in Canada—helping you search the web in a whole new way, no matter what questions are on your mind,” Google said.

Currently, AI Overviews only supports English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Google noted that AI Overviews doesn’t support French but implied it’s working to expand the supported languages.

Google first rolled out AI Overviews to Search in the U.S. in May 2024. The feature shows up in some queries where Google systems determine that generative AI “can be especially helpful.” AI Overviews leverage Google’s Gemini model to take in users’ queries and generate answers that summarize parts of the web. Since May, Google has added a link display that appears alongside the overview as in-line links within the overview, which Google claims drove increased traffic to websites that appear in the overview.

Of course, while Google touts the benefits of AI Overviews, there have been plenty of issues with the feature since it launched in the U.S. Perhaps most infamous was that AI Overviews kept getting stuff really, really wrong. Like, telling people to put glue on pizza to prevent the cheese from falling off wrong. The AI Overviews tend to grab information from sites like Reddit, often taking details from posts that are clearly jokes and regurgitating those posts as facts (hence the pizza glue response). Google pointed out that it took steps to address these issues in May, such as updating its systems to limit the use of user-generated content in responses. However, it’s worth noting that in June 2024, The Verge still found that AI Overviews were making mistakes, including still telling people to put glue on pizza.

But while the pizza glue incident might come off as silly, the underlying problems that led to it can also lead to more serious problems. For example, a report from Ars Technica this week detailed how AI-powered search from Google, Microsoft and Perplexity surfaced racist and widely debunked research that promoted the idea that white people are genetically superior.

How to turn off AI Overviews

Unfortunately, there is no official way to disable Google’s AI Overviews, though there are plenty of unofficial tools to avoid the feature, such as:

• Reconfigure your browser’s default search engine options to bypass AI Overviews (check out this guide on how to do it).
• Use a browser extension like Bye Bye Google AI or uBlock Origin to block AI Overviews.
• Use udm14.com site to do AI-free Google searches.

Images credit: Google

Update Oct. 28th, 2024 at 2:10pm ET: Added additionally details about steps Google took to address issues with AI Overviews.