--- title: "Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization" description: "A new analysis commissioned by The New York Times suggests that Google's AI Overviews are wrong an astonishing percentage of the time." date: "2026-04-08" modified: "2026-04-08" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-ai-overviews-misinformation" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" --- # Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization ![A man in a dark suit sits on a tall black stool facing away, wearing a tall white dunce cap. The background is bright yellow with a large red circle behind him.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: DNY59 / Getty Images* Google's [AI Overviews]() are peddling misinformation on a scale that may be virtually unprecedented in human history. A recent analysis conducted by the AI startup Oumi [at the behest of *The New York Times*]() found that the AI-generated summaries, which appear above Google search results, are accurate around 91 percent of the time. In a sense, that may sound like an impressive figure. But here's an even more impressive one: five trillion. That's roughly the number of search queries that Google processes every year, translating to tens of millions of wrong answers that the AI Overviews are providing every hour — and hundreds of thousands every minute, the analysis calculated. In other words, Google has created a misinformation crisis. Studies have shown that people tend to trust what an AI tells them without question, with [one report finding]() that only 8 percent of users actually double checked an AI's answer. Another [experiment found]() that users still listened to AI when it gave them the wrong answer nearly 80 percent of the time — a grim trend the researchers dubbed "cognitive surrender." Large language models adopt an authoritative tone and can confidently present fabricated information as fact when it can't immediately glean a straight answer. Add the convenience that Google's AI Overviews offer, and it's easy to imagine untold numbers of users taking its summaries at their word. Oumi conducted the analysis using a test called SimpleQA, a widely used benchmark for AI accuracy in the industry which was designed by OpenAI. The first round of tests, conducted in October, used a version of the AI Overviews powered by Google's Gemini 2 model. A follow-up conducted in February tested the feature after it was switched to Gemini 3, its [much-hyped upgrade](). Each round of tests involved 4,326 Google searches. Gemini 3 came out the more accurate model, giving a factually sound response 91 percent of the time. Gemini 2 performed significantly worse, at just 85 percent accurate. On the one hand, it shows that the models are improving. On the other, it shows that Google was willing to foist a model on its userbase that was even more prone to hallucinating, in an ongoing experiment that's still misinforming hundreds of millions of people. Google called the analysis flawed. "This study has serious holes," Ned Adriance, a Google spokesman, told the *NYT* in a statement. "It doesn't reflect what people are actually searching on Google." Yet Google's own tests paint a no less damning picture, the reporting notes. In an internal analysis of Gemini 3, it found that the AI model produced incorrect information 28 percent of the time. Google claims, however, that AI Overviews are more accurate because they draw on Google search results before answering. The improvement between Gemini 2 and Gemini 3 may be papering over a more serious flaw. In the Oumi analysis, Gemini 2 provided answers that were "ungrounded" 37 percent of the time, meaning the AI Overviews cited websites that didn't support the information they provided. But with Gemini 3, this jumped to 56 percent. On top of suggesting that the AI is pulling facts out of thin air, ungrounded responses make it difficult for users to verify the AI's claims. **More on Google:** [*Google News Now Prominently Featuring Polymarket Bets*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()