Google removes AI previews for some medical queries

Following an investigation by the Guardian that found Google’s AI previews offered misleading information in response to certain health-related queries, the company appears to have removed AI previews for some of those queries.

For example, the Guardian initially reported that when users asked “what is the normal range for liver blood tests”, they were presented with numbers that did not take into account factors such as nationality, gender, ethnicity or age, potentially leading them to think their results were healthy when they were not.

Now, the Guardian reports that AI previews have been removed from the results for “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” and “what is the normal range for liver function tests.” However, he found that variations of these queries, such as “lft reference range” or “lft test reference range,” could still lead to AI-generated summaries.

When I tried these queries this morning – several hours after the Guardian published its article – none of them resulted in AI previews, although Google still gave me the option to ask the same query in AI mode. In several cases, the most important result was actually the Guardian article about the deletion.

A Google spokesperson told the Guardian that the company does not “comment on individual removals in search” but is working to “make broad improvements.” The spokesperson also said that an internal team of clinicians reviewed the queries highlighted by the Guardian and found that “in many cases the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites”.

TechCrunch has contacted Google for additional comment. Last year, the company announced new features aimed at improving Google Search for healthcare use cases, including enhanced previews and health-focused AI models.

Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Trust, told the Guardian the removal is “great news”, but added: “Our biggest concern with all of this is that it’s nitpicking a single search result and Google can just turn off AI previews for that, but it’s not tackling the bigger problem with AI previews for health.” »