These companies have a controversial past. Google AI didn’t tell us

Philip Morris International is a company with a controversial history.

The tobacco giant is accused of aggressively marketing addictive and carcinogenic cigarettes and fueling smoking-related deaths and illnesses around the world.

But when a research colleague recently entered the company into Google for a search, they were surprised by the results.

Their search returned a summary of Google’s AI Overview, a feature that generates “a snapshot of key information about a topic or question” at the top of some Google search results.

The AI ​​overview summaries often contain links back to source material, and this relied heavily on sources published by the company itself.

And the Philip Morris AI overview produced by Google to mark the occasion was quite optimistic.

Philip Morris International (PMI) is “a leading international tobacco company working to transition from cigarettes to smoke-free products,” the AI ​​summary said, citing Philip Morris International’s website.

“The…