'Dangerous and alarming': Google removes some of its AI summaries after users' health put at risk [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 11 Jan 2026 02.00 EST
Last modified on Sun 11 Jan 2026 04.42 EST


Google has removed some of its artificial intelligence health summaries after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading information.

The company has said its AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of essential information about a topic or question, are “helpful” and “reliable”. But some of the summaries, which appear at the top of search results, served up inaccurate health information, putting users at risk of harm.

In one case that experts described as “dangerous” and “alarming”, Google provided bogus information about crucial liver function tests that could leave people with serious liver disease wrongly thinking they were healthy.

Typing “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” served up masses of numbers, little context and no accounting for nationality, sex, ethnicity or age of patients, the Guardian found.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/11/google-ai-overviews-health-guardian-investigation

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This "AI" shit is NOT ready for prime time. It needs years of testing and an END to what is apparently a lack of meaningful and well thought-out and structured filters for information-gathering, where instead, they are sucking up vast, often irrelevant, incoherent and random pieces of information, slapping it all together, and calling it "intelligent".