Google’s AI summaries are now available to help a billion people avoid reading full articles
Google is bringing its AI Summaries feature to more than 100 countries around the world, a huge expansion after initially being available only in the US and later in half a dozen other countries. AI Overviews, which uses Google’s Gemini AI models to summarize search query answers, will now be available to more than a billion monthly users.
The paragraphs written by the AI Outlines feature are concise and contain links to the sources used to compose them, usually articles from publications, business websites, or related sources. Since their debut, Google has claimed that AI overviews have led to increased engagement with various resources across the web.
In addition to the geographic expansion, Google is also adding new language support to the service. Depending on where you are and what language you use for Google Search, you will see AI overviews in English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, or Spanish. The broader access based on location and language isn’t the only upgrade for AI Overviews. Google also unveiled a new link view to show the websites and content sources used to produce better AI summaries. The AI views now also include right link views formatted for desktop and mobile devices. In it you can see related content on websites, in addition to the inline links within the AI overview text.
“AI Overviews in Search makes it easier than ever for people to find the information they need and discover relevant sites across the web, providing more opportunities to connect with publishers, companies and creators.”, Google Vice President of Search Quality Srinivasan Venkatachary explained in a blog post. “Since launching in May and expanding outside the US in August, the feedback we have received for AI Overviews has been very positive. People prefer Search with AI Summaries and find their search results more useful. So now, in our biggest expansion yet, we’re launching AI overviews in more than 100 countries and making them accessible in more languages, giving you a whole new way to search, no matter what questions you have.”
Global AI Overviews
The global rollout makes it clear that signals that Google was pulling back on AI Overviews were exaggerated. While there was some speculation that Google was leery of promoting this feature after reports of incorrect and even dangerous answers, that is clearly no longer the case.
Google has even started testing ads within AI Overviews, at least for US mobile users. These ads are labeled to distinguish them from standard search results, but are intended to encourage users to view and potentially purchase products and services relevant to their search terms. Search is the core of Google’s business and remains so, despite legal battles over whether the company is violating anti-monopoly laws. If Google gets comfortable enough with AI Overviews to make it a global feature, ads will almost certainly follow in its wake, with multilingual, AI-generated links seen by billions of people.