Google said in a blog post today that it will make Google Search AI Overview available to users in more than 100 countries. Google says the company plans to reach 1 billion users each month because people like an overview of AI. Additionally, Google is expanding its language support, so users in all countries where AI Overview is available can now view it in the languages available. For example, Japanese users are no longer limited to Japanese people.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with what AI is, it’s a feature found in Google Search. Google’s Gemini AI model generates summaries for most things users search for, or at least when Google’s system-generated AI finds a query that is useful. This summary appears at the top of the page. In addition to answering questions, it also functions as a meal planner, vacation organizer, brainstorming tool, and more.
This update follows several updates released over the past few months since the introduction of AI Overview in May. Previously, in the latest update, users could access the website by clicking a link within the AI summary text. Google says this has increased traffic to its “support website.” However, some publishers and sites worry that the synopsis is destroying their traffic because it’s the first thing people see.
News like this isn’t surprising, as Google is packing as much AI into search as possible. The AI brief also sparked controversy as AI provided inaccurate information to people for searching. For example, we recommended adding a little glue to the pizza. In response to these issues, Google has put some protections and guardrails in AI Overview to avoid similar strange issues.
Correction, October 28, 2024, 1:30pm ET: This article originally stated that Google was adding local language support to AI Overview. Since this feature was already available, we made it clear that supported languages can be viewed in any country where AI Overview is available. We apologize for the error.
