How accurate are Google’s AI overviews? - NYTimes

In 2024, Google started giving A.I.-generated answers prime placement at the top of its search results page. The new product, AI Overviews, helped transform Google from a curator of information into a publisher.

A recent analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately nine out of 10 times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, this means that it provides tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour (or hundreds of thousands of inaccuracies every minute), according to an analysis done by an A.I. start-up called Oumi.

More than half of the accurate responses were “ungrounded,” meaning they linked to websites that did not completely support the information they provided. This makes it challenging to check AI Overviews’ accuracy.