AI Overviews in search: when to open the original source

What are AI Overviews and AI Mode?

AI Overviews appear in the results for some searches. They are an AI-generated snapshot of key information, with links to dig deeper. AI Mode is a conversational search where you can ask follow-up questions. According to Google, it splits your question into subtopics and searches them at the same time. Google's help lists AI Mode for many European countries, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy and Spain.

Both features write their own text. Google puts it plainly: AI Overviews ‘can and will make mistakes’, and AI Mode ‘doesn't always get it right’.

What does this look like in everyday life?

Fictional example: Ciarán in Dublin wants to cancel his gym membership. The AI Overview gives a notice period of three months, by registered letter only. He taps the link next to that sentence and lands on a 2019 forum post about a gym in another country.

So he opens his own contract in the gym's customer account: one month's notice, cancellation via a form in the account. He cancels there and keeps the confirmation. The summary was not made up from nothing, but it did not fit Ciarán's country or contract. For cancelling online, see Cancelling a subscription online.

When is the summary enough, and when should you open the source?

What matters is what a mistake would cost you. Google itself advises checking important information in more than one place and clicking the supporting links.

Tip: Rule of thumb: if you are going to pay, sign, take something or meet a deadline based on the answer, read the original first.

How do you check an AI answer against the original source?

1. Open the right link: the one placed next to the statement that matters to you.
2. Find the passage: search the page for the keyword or figure. Are the conditions and exceptions the same?
3. Check the publisher: authority, manufacturer, consumer organisation, newsroom or forum? A forum post describes an experience; it does not prove a rule.
4. Pin down the country: currency, legal notice, domain ending and names of laws give it away. A rule from one country does not automatically apply in another.
5. Look for the date: an older page may describe outdated rules.
6. Compare: for money, health and legal matters, also check with an independent, ideally official body.

If the source says something different from the summary, do not rely on the AI answer. More in Checking an AI answer: confident wording is not evidence.

Can you turn off AI answers in Google Search?

Not completely. According to Google's help, AI Overviews are a core Search feature, like knowledge panels, and cannot be turned off. The Web filter, however, shows only text-based links. AI Mode is something you open yourself, for example with the AI Mode button or at google.com/ai.

In Labs, Google's test area, you can turn off ‘AI in Search’ to leave the experiments.

What does EU law say, and what about Switzerland?

Since 2 August 2026, the transparency rules in Article 50 of the EU AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, have applied. AI systems that interact directly with people must let you know you are dealing with AI, at the latest at the first interaction, unless this is obvious. AI-generated content must be marked in a machine-readable format; certain providers of systems already on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026. Whether an answer is right is still yours to check. More on labels and watermarks in Understanding AI labels.

Switzerland is not an EU member, so the AI Act does not apply there automatically. Google still lists Switzerland for AI Mode, so the same checks are worth doing there.