It’s been less than two weeks since Google debuted “AI Overview” in Google Search, and public criticism has mounted after queries have returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature — without any way to opt out.
AI Overview shows a quick summary of answers to search questions at the very top of Google Search. For example, if a user searches for the best way to clean leather boots, the results page may display an “AI Overview” at the top with a multistep cleaning process, gleaned from information it synthesized from around the web.
But social media users have shared a wide range of screenshots showing the AI tool giving incorrect and controversial responses.
Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and other companies are at the helm of a generative AI arms race as companies in seemingly every industry rush to add AI-powered chatbots and agents to avoid being left behind by competitors. The market is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
Here are some examples of errors produced by AI Overview, according to screenshots shared by users.
When asked how many Muslim presidents the U.S. has had, AI Overview responded, “The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama.”
When a user searched for “cheese not sticking to pizza,” the feature suggested adding “about 1/8 cup of nontoxic glue to the sauce.” Social media users found an 11-year-old Reddit comment that seemed to be the source.
Attribution can also be a problem for AI Overview, especially in attributing inaccurate information to medical professionals or scientists.
For instance, when asked, “How long can I stare at the sun for best health,” the tool said, “According to WebMD, scientists say that staring at the sun for 5-15 minutes, or up to 30 minutes if you have darker skin, is generally safe and provides the most health benefits.”
When asked, “How many rocks should I eat each day,” the tool said, “According to UC Berkeley geologists, people should eat at least one small rock a day,” going on to list the vitamins and digestive benefits.
The tool also can respond inaccurately to simple queries, such as making up a list of fruits that end with “um,” or saying the year 1919 was 20 years ago.
When asked whether or not Google Search violates antitrust law, AI Overview said, “Yes, the U.S. Justice Department and 11 states are suing Google for antitrust violations.”
The day Google rolled out AI Overview at its annual Google I/O event, the company said it also plans to introduce assistant-like planning capabilities directly within search. It explained that users will be able to search for something like, “Create a 3-day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare,” and they’d get a starting point with a wide range of recipes from across the web.
“The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Many of the examples we’ve seen have been uncommon queries, and we’ve also seen examples that were doctored or that we couldn’t reproduce.”
The spokesperson said AI Overview underwent extensive testing before launch and that the company is taking “swift action where appropriate under our content policies.”
The tool allowed users to enter prompts to create an image, but almost immediately, users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses, which circulated widely on social media.
For instance, when one user asked Gemini to show a German soldier in 1943, the tool depicted a racially diverse set of soldiers wearing German military uniforms of the era, according to screenshots on social media platform X.
When asked for a “historically accurate depiction of a medieval British king,” the model generated another racially diverse set of images, including one of a woman ruler, screenshots showed. Users reported similar outcomes when they asked for images of the U.S. founding fathers, an 18th-century king of France, a German couple in the 1800s and more. The model showed an image of Asian men in response to a query about Google’s own founders, users reported.
Google said in a statement at the time that it was working to fix Gemini’s image-generation issues, acknowledging that the tool was “missing the mark.” Soon after, the company announced it would immediately “pause the image generation of people” and “re-release an improved version soon.”
In February, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Google planned to relaunch its image-generation AI tool in the next “few weeks,” but it has not yet rolled out again.
The problems with Gemini’s image-generation outputs reignited a debate within the AI industry, with some groups calling Gemini too “woke,” or left-leaning, and others saying that the company didn’t sufficiently invest in the right forms of AI ethics. Google came under fire in 2020 and 2021 for ousting the co-leads of its AI ethics group after they published a research paper critical of certain risks of such AI models and then later reorganizing the group’s structure.
In 2023, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was criticized by some employees for the company’s botched and “rushed” rollout of Bard, which followed the viral spread of ChatGPT.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct name of Google’s AI Overview. Also, an earlier version of this article included a link to a screenshot that Google later confirmed was doctored.
TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.
Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.
TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.
“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”
Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.
“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.
But there may a dark side to this growth.
As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.
“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”
Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.
“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”
Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.
While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.
Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
Read more CNBC tech news
Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.