Google LLC today announced plans to make its search engine’s AI Overviews feature available in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the U.K.
The move comes about three months after the company made the capability generally available in the U.S. When users enter certain questions into Google Search, AI Overviews displays a natural language answer generated by artificial intelligence models. The answer appears above the standard list of website links that the search engine retrieves in response to queries.
In each of the six countries where AI Overviews is set to become available, the feature will provide support for local languages. The update, which is set to roll out in the coming weeks, also brings with it another enhancement. Google is upgrading the AI Overviews panel at the top of search results to display more links to the websites from which the feature sources information.
Additional interface improvements could arrive in the future. “We’re also currently testing the addition of links to relevant web pages directly within the text of AI Overviews (in addition to the prominent links we already show), making it even easier for people to click out and visit sites that interest them,” Hema Budaraju, Google’s senior director of product management for search, detailed in a blog post.
The company is rolling out the update amid renewed scrutiny of the way AI Overviews uses online content. Bloomberg reported today that publishers can’t opt out of having their content incorporated into AI-generated answers without also removing their websites from Google Search. According to a number of media executives who spoke to the paper, that choice could create traffic acquisition and monetization challenges.
Google told Bloomberg that opting out of AI Overviews removes websites from its search engine because the two systems are “deeply entwined.” According to the company, making only specific sections of a website inaccessible to AI Overviews would “likely” also lead to their removal from search results.
The Alphabet Inc. unit’s business practices in the search market previously came into focus two weeks ago, when a federal judge ruled that it maintains an illegal monopoly with Google Search. The ruling cited agreements that Google had signed with Apple Inc. and other companies to ensure they set its service as the default choice on their devices. Previously, a jury last year found that Google breached antitrust rules in the mobile app market.
It’s unclear what impact, if any, those legal developments may have on AI Overviews. The search giant continues to develop new features for the tool. In conjunction with today’s move to make AI Overviews available in more countries, Google detailed two experimental features that enable users to save query responses generated by the tool and simplify their phrasing.