Creators fume over AI overviews in Google Search, launch a petition

Creators have started a petition to stop the company from forcing AI overviews in search results over poor outcomes.

The petition which was initiated on 11 March also seeks to make the use of AI overviews optional with an opt-in option required for Google users to access, unlike now when it is available by default.

Why the petition

The petition is led by someone who claims to be the founder of an SEO and Digital Marketing agency focused on helping small businesses and solopreneurs thrive.

According to the petitioners, Google has made it increasingly difficult for businesses to succeed through organic traffic with their forceful push for AI playing a big role in it.

Part of the petition read:

“We are asking Google’s CEO (Sundar Pichai), Chief Technologist (Prabhakar Raghavan), Director of Engineering (Ray Kurzweil), and Head of Search (Nick Fox) to immediately stop forcing AI search results and using AI as large parts of their once great algorithm and to start promoting high-quality web results yet again using sensible ranking factors instead of AI hallucinations.”

Petitioners also allege that more than 80,000 Chrome users have installed extensions to remove AI Overviews at the top of Google search results since its introduction, attesting to the poor results of the overview.

They also cited a recent study by Columbia University that says AI search gets its citation wrong 60% of the time on average, which makes the user experience terrible.

Long time of complaints

There have been several complaints against Google’s AI overviews in search, as the results are either outright wrong or misinterpreted by the AI from the main source.

For example, the search overview once said it is possible to see 75% of the Earth’s surface from the ISS, which is not accurate based on the original article.

Also out of sheer desperation, Google users found a way to disable the feature by shouting curse words at the voice function.