Publishers can’t control AI answers. They can’t ignore them either

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Google’s AI Overviews are sometimes wrong. This has been a perennial complaint about the Gemini-written summaries that appear at the top of search results since their debut in mid 2024. It also happens to be true. Optimists might dismiss the infamous “glue on pizza” moment and others like it as simply early bugs in a new feature. But in the spring of 2026, The New York Times commissioned AI startup Oumi to study how frequently AI Overviews give bad answers. The latest version was accurate 91% of the time, which sounds pretty good until you consider Google’s billions of daily searches. At that scale, even a single-digit error rate can produce millions of inaccurate summaries every hour. To hammer the point home in its write-up of the study, the Times pointed to BBC tech reporter Thomas Germain’s story about how he wrote up a fake blog post that declared himself the best hot dog-eating tech journalist on Earth. Within a day, Google’s AI Overviews were parroting that claim, apparently with little scrutiny. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/media-copilot.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/fe289316-bc4f-44ef-96bf-148b3d8578c1_1440x1440.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to The Media Copilot\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for The Media Copilot. To learn more visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/\u0022\u003Emediacopilot.substack.com\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText