Study of 4,480 election queries finds Google's AI Overviews opaque and reliant on YouTube
The Decoder · rss · 2026-09-01
Using data access granted under the EU's Digital Services Act, German advocacy group AlgorithmWatch ran 4,480 election-related search queries on Google and analyzed the AI Overviews returned. The overviews appeared inconsistently, leaned on a small pool of sources — chief among them Google's own YouTube — and sometimes took sides on contested topics. Google left open whether its earlier safeguards against AI answers on election questions still apply.
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