Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

Summary

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world’s second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google.Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said.“This matters because YouTube is not a medical publisher,” the researchers wrote. “It is a general-purpose video platform. Anyone can upload content there (eg board-certified physicians, hospital channels, but also wellness influencers, life coaches, and creators with no medical training at all).”Google told the Guardian that AI Overviews was designed to surface high-quality content from reputable sources, regardless of format, and a variety of credible health authorities and licensed medical professionals created content on YouTube. The study’s findings could not be extrapolated to other regions as it was conducted using German-language queries in Germany, it said.The research comes after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading health information in Google AI Overviews responses.In one case that experts said was “dangerous” and “alarming”, Google provided bogus information about crucial liver function tests that coul...