January 12, 2026 | 05:03 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Google has removed AI-generated medical information summaries for several medical queries after an investigation by The Guardian found that the AI-based summaries have the potential to provide misleading health information.
The investigation revealed that Google's AI summaries displayed the "normal" range of liver blood test results without taking into account important factors such as nationality, gender, ethnicity, and age. Such information is considered risky as it may lead users to believe that their test results are normal when they are not.
Following the publication of the report, the AI-generated information summaries have been removed from search results for queries such as "normal range of liver blood tests" and "normal range of liver function tests." However, other search variations such as "LFT reference range" or "LFT test reference range" may still potentially display AI-generated summaries.
A search conducted several hours after the report's publication showed that the AI-generated information summaries no longer appear for these queries. Nevertheless, Google still provides the option for users to ask the same questions through AI Mode. In some cases, The Guardian article about the removal of AI Overviews actually appears as the top search result.
"The company does not comment on individual removals within Search, but that it works to make broad improvements," said a Google spokesperson, quoted from a Tech Crunch report on January 12, 2025.
The spokesperson mentioned that an internal team of clinicians reviewed the queries highlighted by The Guardian and found that, in many cases, the information was inaccurate and not supported by high-quality websites.
Director of Communication and Policy at the British Liver Trust, Vanessa Hebditch, welcomed the removal of AI summaries. She said the removal is very good news.
"Our bigger concern with all this is that it is nit-picking a single search result and Google can just shut off the AI Overviews for that but it’s not tackling the bigger issue of AI Overviews for health," she added.
Read: Indonesia Temporarily Blocks X's Grok AI Feature
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