Google AI Search Manipulation Sparks New Spam Crackdown

Google’s AI Overviews can summarize the web. The problem is that the web can lie.

Google is trying to police a growing problem inside AI-powered Search after a BBC investigation found that misleading online content can influence answers from Google’s AI Overviews and other major chatbots. Its updated spam policies now explicitly include attempts to manipulate generative AI responses.

The search giant says the policy language only clarifies rules it already enforced. But as AI takes up more space in Search, the old spam problem starts to look different.

A silly test with a serious flaw

AI chatbots do not always answer from memory. In some cases, they search the live web, grab information from online sources, and use that material to build a response.

BBC reporter Thomas Germain tested how fragile that process can be…