Dear Friend –

Just recently, Google began rolling out “AI Overviews” as the primary result in its core Search product on the web. While some of the widely shared inaccurate results have been on the humorous side, many others have been downright dangerous, to the point where Google needs to drop this new technology immediately.

You’ve probably seen screenshots in your social feeds … like the suggestion to add glue to pizza sauce to get your cheese to stay on the crust, or that people should eat at least one small rock per day – clearly neither of which are good pieces of advice.

But on the serious side, AI Overviews have contributed to the spread of disinformation by matter-of-factly stating the lie that President Barack Obama was America’s first and only Muslim President.

Google’s products are pervasive, widely trusted, and have enormous influence over human decisions large and small—to the point where their name has become a synonym for the word “search.” While Google has responded and made "more than a dozen technical improvements,” the new AI Overview technology—which users cannot opt out of—may already be causing serious harm in the real world. [1]

Sign the petition today and tell Google CEO Sundar Pichai: Remove AI Overview from Google Search results.

TAKE ACTION

From an economic perspective, of course, Google’s decision to promote AI Overview above legitimate, already-published content is a huge blow to content creators worldwide. It’s essentially a plagiarism tool that swipes information from various sites, regardless of their legitimacy, and republishes it as fact.

In rolling out this new technology, Google seems to have evaded or ignored key fundamental questions of accuracy and responsibility. What will happen when someone searches for an at-home remedy for a medical issue, and they’re unknowingly presented with false advice? What will happen when anti-vaccine content from fake “news sources” finds its way into everyone’s search results?

It’s time to prioritize the public interest over a competition to be first in the AI race – and given Google’s dominance in the search marketplace, they have an extra responsibility to NOT push potentially harmful AI-generated content out to the public as accurate answers to search queries.

So please sign our petition today and tell Google to drop AI Overview from their search platform.

Thanks for taking action today,

Nicole Gill
Co-founder and Executive Director
Accountable Tech

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Sources:

1. Google: AI Overviews: About last week

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