We’ve all been there. You feel a strange pain in your side or get a confusing test result from the doctor and the first thing you do is open Google. You are not pursuing a medical degree; You just want a quick answer to the question “Am I okay?” But recently Google had to put the brakes on its AI search summaries because, as it turns out, asking a robot for medical advice could actually be dangerous.
Google has quietly removed a number of AI-generated health summaries from its search results after an investigation found they revealed inaccurate and, frankly, frightening information. It all started after a report from The Guardian pointed out that these “AI overviews” – the colorful boxes that appear at the top of your search – were providing incomplete data.
The most glaring example was liver blood tests
If you asked the AI for “normal ranges,” it would just spit out a list of numbers. It was not asked whether you were male or female. It did not ask about your age, ethnicity, or medical history. There was only a flat number. Medical experts looked at it and basically said, “This is dangerous.”
The problem here isn’t just that the AI was wrong; it was dangerously misleading. Imagine someone with early-stage liver disease looking up their test results. The AI tells them that their numbers are within the “normal” range, which it determined from a random website. This person might think, “Oh, I’m fine then,” and skip a follow-up appointment. In reality, a “normal” number for a 20-year-old could be a warning sign for a 50-year-old. AI lacks the nuance to recognize this, and this gap in context can have serious, real-world consequences.
Google’s response was pretty standard – they removed the specific queries that were flagged and insisted that their system was usually helpful. But here’s the kicker: health organizations like the British Liver Trust have found that if you rephrased the question just slightly, the same bad information immediately resurfaced. It’s like a digital slugfest. You fix a mistake and the AI simply generates a new one five seconds later.
The real issue here is trust
Because these AI summaries are placed at the top of the page above the actual links to hospitals or medical journals, they exude authority. We are trained to trust in the best outcome. When Google presents an answer in a neat little box, our brain subconsciously treats it as the “right” answer. But that’s not it. It’s just a prediction machine that tries to guess what words will come next.
Right now, this is a huge wake-up call. AI is great for summarizing an email or planning a travel itinerary, but when it comes to your health, it’s clearly not ready for prime time yet. Until these systems can understand context — or until Google implements stricter protections — it’s probably safer to scroll past the robot and click on an actual link from a real doctor. Speed is nice, but accuracy is the only thing that matters when it comes to your health.
