Google Search's AI Overview expects a billion monthly global users—available in half of the world

It’s safe to say that Google Search’s AI Overview had quite a rocky start at first. The Gemini-powered feature made headlines here and there about ridiculous and misleading responses, so much so that Google had to pause it.

But in its biggest expansion, the Mountain View tech giant said that AI Overview is rolling out in over 100 countries worldwide—that’s half the world already, expecting over a billion monthly global users.

“AI Overviews will become available to more users, languages, and regions over time,” Google says in the feature’s support page.

The announcement followed the August news when Google added countries like the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil for AI Overview. It also received a makeover and a new format, which displayed source websites more prominently in a new right-hand side panel.

“As part of this update, we’re also extending language support across the board. If you’re in any country with AI Overviews, you can now get them in any of the currently supported languages, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish,” Google adds.

Google had a nice idea behind the AI Overview. It sums up what you’re looking for on the web into one cohesive answer instead of giving you tons of links that you’d have to click one by one to find it.

But it became a problem when the Gemini-powered feature scrapped forums like Reddit—despite this year’s partnership between the two—or websites that post humor and satires, and treated it like cold truth. There were instances where AI Overview suggested users use glue to make the pizza stick, or even mistakenly say that Obama is a Muslim.

That was in the past, but Google’s AI Overview is actually getting better now. Liz Reid, Google’s VP of Search, reassured that some of these ridiculous AI Overview results were only “a large number of faked screenshots shared widely. Some of these faked results have been obvious and silly.”

But, if you’re still looking to get rid of Google Search’s AI Overview for good, here’s how.