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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 news follows Google’s high-profile rollout of Gemini’s image-generation tool in February, and a pause that same month after comparable issues.

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.

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CNBC Daily Open: AI still under pressure — but some analysts see a year-end rally

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November 18, 2025

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CNBC Daily Open: AI still under pressure — but some analysts see a year-end rally

People pose for pictures at the Wall Street Bull in New York’s Financial District on June 24, 2024 in New York City. 

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.84% Monday stateside as technology stocks were under pressure, with Apple, Meta and Oracle retreating more than 1% each.

Artificial intelligence lynchpin Nvidia performed worse, losing almost 2%. CEO Jensen Huang in October said the chipmaker had “half a trillion dollars” of business on the books for 2025 and 2026. When Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings Wednesday stateside, investors will be combing through Huang’s comments for signs of strong 2026 growth, as suggested by that data point.

The problem with promises or expectations, especially for a company that is one of the two around which the artificial intelligence universe orbits (OpenAI being the other), is that any disappointment will be disproportionately painful.

“If they offer any even slightly muted guidance or forecast for demand for their chips, the market would take that poorly,” Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield said.

Despite the recent sell-off in tech over concerns about high valuations and capital expenditure, some analysts think we could still end the year with a rally.

 “We continue to see a balance of bullish and bearish signals heading into year-end, but our stance remains that a year-end rally is likely,” Michael Graham, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, wrote in a Monday note.

Likewise, HSBC’s chief multi-asset strategist Max Kettner on Monday said the bank thinks “the probability of a melt-up into year-end – particularly in equities – is much greater” than a potential AI bubble popping.

If their predictions prove true, investors will have much to celebrate during the festive season — and we can worry about AI in the new year.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. indexes fall Monday stateside. Investors sold off technology names, furthering their downward trajectory. Alphabet shares, however, bucked the trend on news that Berkshire Hathaway has taken a stake in it. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.54%.

‘Half a trillion dollars’ of business for Nvidia. CEO Jensen Huang said in October that the chipmaker has $500 billion in orders for 2025 and 2026 combined. Analysts think Huang is signaling a strong forecast for 2026 sales.

Divided outlook on a December rate cut. In prepared remarks on Monday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he is focused on the labor market “after months of weakening.” But Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said there is a “need to proceed slowly.”

India announces energy deal with the U.S. Nearly 10% of New Delhi’s liquified petroleum gas will be imported from the U.S., said Hardeep Singh Puri, Indian union minister of petroleum and natural gas, on Monday. It’s a move to shore up ties with the White House.

[PRO] Bitcoin’s downward trend could portend trouble. The price of the cryptocurrency, which has been under pressure, is a “leading indicator” for U.S. stocks, an analyst told CNBC. But others think bitcoin still has tailwinds behind it even in the near term.

And finally…

A Swiss national flag on a ferry on Lake Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. The Swiss president dashed to the US capital Tuesday in a last-minute attempt to prevent her American counterpart from imposing the highest tariff of any developed nation on Switzerland.  Photographer: Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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Arm custom chips get a boost with Nvidia partnership

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10 hours ago

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November 17, 2025

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Arm custom chips get a boost with Nvidia partnership

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, reacts during the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 31, 2025.

Kim Soo-hyeon | Reuters

Arm on Monday said that central processing units based on its technology will be able to integrate with AI chips using Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion technology.

The move will make it easier for customers of both companies who prefer a custom approach to their infrastructure — namely hyperscalers —to pair Arm-based Neoverse CPUs with Nvidia’s dominant graphics processing units.

It’s the latest example of Nvidia using dealmaking to partner with nearly every major technology company as it finds itself at the center of the AI industry. The announcement signals that Nvidia is opening up its NVLink platform to integrate with a wide variety of custom chips, instead of forcing customers to use its CPUs.

Nvidia currently sells an AI product called Grace Blackwell that pairs multiple GPUs with an Nvidia-branded Arm-based CPU. Other configurations include servers that use CPus from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.

But Microsoft, Amazon and Google are all developing or deploying Arm-based CPUs in their clouds to give them more control over the set ups and reduce their costs.

Arm doesn’t make CPUs but it licenses its instruction set technology that those chips need. The company also sells designs that allow partners to more quickly build Arm-based chips.

As part of Monday’s announcement, Arm said that custom Neoverse chips will include a new protocol that’ll allow them to move data seamlessly with GPUs.

The CPU has historically been the most important part in a server. But generative AI infrastructure is based around the AI accelerator chip, which in most cases is an Nvidia GPU. As many as eight GPUs can be paird with a CPU in an AI server.

In September, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion into Intel, the leading CPU maker. A key part of the deal was to enable Intel CPUs to integrate into AI servers using Nvidia’s NVLink technology.

Nvidia reached an agreement to buy Arm for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal failed in 2022 because of regulatory issues in the U.S. and U.K. Nvidia had a small stake in Arm, which is majority-owned by Softbank, as of February.

Meanwhile, Softbank liquidated its entire stake in Nvidia earlier this month and Softbank is backing the OpenAI Stargate project, which plans to use Arm technology in addition to chips from Nvidia and AMD.

WATCH: Nvidia’s options pricing can swing 6-7% in either direction, says Susquehanna’s Murphy

Nvidia's options pricing can swing 6-7% in either direction, says Susquehanna's Murphy

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Govini founder Eric Gillespie’s lawyer calls child sex chat ‘internet fantasy,’ not a crime

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12 hours ago

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November 17, 2025

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Govini founder Eric Gillespie's lawyer calls child sex chat 'internet fantasy,' not a crime

Govini founder Eric Gillespie urged a person who he believed to be a dad offering his 10-year-old daughter to be sexually abused to use encrypted chat platforms, a Pennsylvania criminal complaint alleges.

“Signal is safer for er small talk,” Gillespie wrote to the purported father, who was actually an undercover law-enforcement agent, according to a transcript of a chat included in the criminal complaint obtained by CNBC.

Gillespie then wrote that Session, another commonly used end-to-end encrypted platform, is “fine but less secure” than Signal, the filing says.

While chatting in Session, he sent the agent multiple photos of a “recent playmate” wearing a diaper and made repeated graphic references to sex acts with children, court documents state.

Gillespie also wrote that he preferred young children: “best when they can’t talk.”

The charging documents note that users can delete media and messages sent in Session, and because of that, the agent could not get screenshots of media files sent by Gillespie.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General said that the chat with the agent began in an online forum often used by people attempting to arrange meetings with children.

The men then moved their discussion to Session, according to the AG’s office, which last week said it had arrested and charged Gillespie with four felony counts, including unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

He is being held without bond.

His arrest came at a pivotal time for Govini, a defense contractor that is a key player in the U.S. military’s push to modernize.

Gillespie’s lawyer, David Shrager of Shrager Defense Attorneys, told CNBC that he “vigorously denies these charges.”

“In this case, two adults were lying to each other in an internet fantasy chat, where at least one of the participants was using AI,” Shrager said.

The criminal complaint notes that at one point in the conversation, the agent sent “A photo media file of an undercover female Agent age regressed with AI technology to appear approximately 10 years of age.”

That is the only mention of the use of artificial intelligence in the complaint.

“It’s easy to understand why people rush to judgment when they hear about these types of charges,” Shrager told CNBC.

The attorney said that he believes Gillespie will be exonerated.

Gillespie is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on Thursday before Magisterial District Judge John Ditzler in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Govini last week called Gillespie a “depraved individual” in a statement announcing his termination as executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Govini said that Gillespie “has no role with the company and is not a majority shareholder.”

“Since being terminated, he will not receive a paycheck,” the company said.

The company did not disclose the current level of Gillespie’s stake in Govini.

Earlier this year, Govini landed a nearly $1 billion contract with the Department of Defense and joined the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Command Control program.

In October, Govini announced a $150 million investment from Bain Capital.

Bain declined to comment on Gillespie’s arrest.

Gillespie was quoted prominently in a news release about Bain’s investment.

“I founded Govini to create an entirely new category of software built to transform how the U.S. government uses AI and data to make decisions,” Gillespie said at the time. “After methodically developing our proprietary technology, that vision is now a reality.”

Accel and Salesforce Ventures are also major investors in Govini. Neither company has responded to requests for comment.

Multiple people familiar with Govini, and who had personal contact with Gillespie, said that he had an active role at the company. Documents and text messages reviewed by CNBC support that claim.

One person, who asked not to be named in order to discuss internal communication, described Gillespie as the point man for key financial dealings.

In a statement responding to questions about his day-to-day involvement at the company, Govini said, “Mr. Gillespie had opinions and ideas and did not hesitate to share them.”

“In his capacity as Executive Chairman, he was aware of and consulted on the operations of the leadership team,” the company said.

Pentagon officials last week said that they are looking into Gillespie’s arrest and possible security issues.

CNBC asked the department if it is looking at possible actions related to the company’s status as a government contractor.

“While the Department cannot comment on individual security clearances in accordance with the Privacy Act, we take these allegations very seriously,” a senior Pentagon official said in a statement.

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