Googles AI Overviews spew millions of false answers per hour, bombshell study reveals

Google’s AI-generated search results are spewing out tens of millions of inaccurate answers per hour – even as the tech giant siphons visitors and ad revenue from cash-strapped news outlets, according to a bombshell analysis.To test the accuracy of Google’s AI Overviews, startup Oumi reviewed 4,326 Google search results generated by Google’s Gemini 2 model and the same number of results generated by its more advanced Gemini 3 model.The analysis found that the models were accurate 85% and 91% of the time, respectively.With Google expected to handle more than 5 trillion searchers in 2026 alone, that means AI Overviews are spitting out fake news at a rate of hundreds of thousands of mistakes every single minute – with users left none the wiser.

The New York Times was first to report on Oumi’s analysis.“Google AI Overviews have been a disaster for publishers who rely on clicks to fund the production of quality journalism, but they also let down users looking for accurate information,” said Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 news outlets including The Post.The wrong answers included several basic fumbles, such as misstating the year in which musician Bob Marley’s home was converted into a museum, misstating the year that former MLB relief pitcher Dick Drago died, and claiming there was no record of Yo-Yo Ma being inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame even though he was in 2007, according to examples Oumi provided to the Times.AI Overviews have appeared at the top of Google search results since 2024, while the traditional set of blue links to news outlets are effectively buried out of sight.Publishers have long accused Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, of ripping off their work to “train” its AI model without proper credit or compensation.“Algorithmically-generated responses that pull in data from nearly every source on the internet simply cannot be trusted,” Cof...