Google’s AI Overviews Can Scam You. Here’s How to Stay Safe

Google's AI Overviews can scam you.

Here's how to stay safe.

These days, when you search for something,

instead of the traditional list of links,

Google gives you what is called an AI Overview,

a summary of information scraped from across the web

packaged neatly to look as reliable

and accurate as possible.

While these answers are often pulled

from the work of human writers

who actually have the answers to your questions,

there is another danger to Google's AI Overviews.

Here's how the scam happens.

Someone googles a company, maybe their bank or an airline,

looking for a customer support number.

Google's AI overview highlights the phone number

at the top of the page, and they call it,

except the number doesn't actually belong

to the company at all.

It connects them to a scammer,

pretending to be customer support,

who then tries to take payment information

or other sensitive details from the caller.

It's not entirely clear

how these fake numbers are being planted,

but researchers believe the numbers are being published

in multiple low profile places online

alongside the names of major companies.

Google's AI then scrapes and summarizes the information

without properly verifying it.

The advice for avoiding the scam is quite simple.

Don't believe everything you read in an AI Overview,

especially not when it comes to specific facts,

figures, or phone numbers.

Although there currently isn't an option

to turn AI Overviews off,

Google told WIRED that it's actively trying

to fight the scammers,

as well as releasing updates

that make its spam detection system stronger.

For now, AI might make search more convenient,

but when it comes to sensitive information,

a few extra clicks instead of relying

on Google's AI Overviews

might save a lot more than time because-