Google Puts AI-Written Answers at the Top of Its Search Results for Everyone in the U.S.

After a year of testing, 'AI Overviews' — a paragraph generated by Google's Gemini program, above the familiar links — begin rolling out to all American users this week. It's the biggest change to how the world looks things up since Google began.

Google announced at its developer conference today that AI Overviews — the paragraph of AI-written answer that has appeared at the top of some search results for testers over the past year — will now appear for everyone in the United States, and for a billion people worldwide by year's end. Search for how to get a stain out of a couch, or which Japanese restaurant near you is good for a date, and Google's Gemini program will write an answer, with the traditional links beneath it. Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, said the company will "do the Googling for you."

It is the most significant change to Google's product since the company was founded, and the company has been slow to make it for a reason its executives have never quite said aloud. The ten blue links are where Google's advertising lives, and where the rest of the web gets its traffic. An answer at the top means fewer clicks on both. Google said it will place ads in and around the overviews and that it has found people click on the links inside them more, not less. Publishers, who have watched this coming for eighteen months, are not reassured.

The overview can also be wrong. The programs that write it make things up, and Google's testers have posted examples. The company says it shows overviews only when it is confident, and that they carry links so people can check. Whether people check an answer that sits where Google's answers have always sat is the experiment that begins this week, on a few hundred million people.