In the wild · what's new on Google
"AI overview" in search
30-second gist~30s read
Most search engines now put a small AI-generated answer at the very top of results. It's quick, often useful, sometimes confidently wrong, and almost never sourced clearly enough to verify in a hurry.
Treat it the same way you'd treat a friend's quick opinion: a fine starting point, not the last word. The real sources are still the blue links underneath.
If you want more
When to trust it, when to scroll past
Probably fine for: definitions, simple how-tos, "what's the capital of...", recipes, broad-strokes context.
Don't rely on it for: medical advice, legal advice, financial decisions, anything dated or geographic ("is X open today?", "what's the speed limit on Y road?"), and anything where you need an actual source.
The AI overview is built on top of the same engines that power chatbots — so it inherits their tendency to confabulate when uncertain. Hallucinations show up here too.
Lessons that teach this
Plain AI Curriculum lessons that anchor on this topic — short reads with practice, free under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Across Plain AI · what's changing in AI
No direct updates yet for this topic — here's what's changing more broadly.
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OpenAI launched GPT-5.5
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AI tutor data came in — Khanmigo's first real-world results
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Meta released Llama 5