Google removes AI Overviews for liver tests following report on misleading data

After an investigation by The Guardian revealed that Google AI Overviews provided misleading information for certain health-related questions, the company appears to have removed the feature for some of those queries.

For instance, The Guardian initially reported that asking “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” would yield numbers that overlooked factors like nationality, sex, ethnicity, or age. This omission could lead users to believe their results were healthy when they were not.

The Guardian now states that AI Overviews have been removed from results for “what is the normal range for liver blood tests” and “what is the normal range for liver function tests.”

However, the publication found that similar queries, such as “lft reference range” or “lft test reference range,” might still produce AI-generated summaries. In several cases, the top search result was the Guardian article about the removal itself.

A Google spokesperson told The Guardian that the company does not comment on individual removals from Search but focuses on making broad improvements. The spokesperson added that an internal team of clinicians reviewed the queries the report highlighted and found that, in many instances, high-quality websites supported the information, which was not inaccurate.

TechCrunch has reached out to Google for additional comment. Last year, the company announced new features aimed at enhancing Google Search for healthcare purposes, including improved overviews and health-focused AI models.

While welcoming the removal as “excellent news,” Vanessa Hebditch, director of communications and policy at the British Liver Trust, expressed a broader concern to The Guardian. She stated that focusing on “nit-picking a single search result”—where Google simply disables AI Overviews for that specific instance—”is not tackling the bigger issue of AI Overviews for health.”