Google’s AI Overviews Echo Anti-Abortion Messaging, Report Finds-OxBig News Network

(Bloomberg) — Google’s AI summaries have responded to some internet searches about abortion by echoing talking points from organizations that attempt to dissuade women from ending their pregnancies, according to a Campaign for Accountability report.

In a series of searches conducted in three states that require women to have an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion — Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin — the nonprofit group found that Google’s AI Overviews framed the scans as a way for women to make informed choices about their health and cited pages from crisis pregnancy centers as sources for the summaries. 

Crisis pregnancy centers, a type of nonmedical organization with a mission to encourage women to go through with their unwanted pregnancies, have invested heavily in shaping information available online about abortion to reach women as they are trying to obtain the procedure, and Google’s hugely popular products have emerged as a key forum.

In a statement, Alphabet Inc.-owned Google said that its AI Overviews “are designed to surface high quality information from multiple perspectives on topics where there are a range of viewpoints.”

“We give people many ways to get more context about the sites they’re seeing in search and ads, including prominent advertising disclosures that clearly state whether advertisers do or not provide abortion services,” the company said. Google also has removed ads that violate its policies.

Shortly after the US Supreme Court ended the legally protected right to an abortion in 2022, Bloomberg found that crisis pregnancy centers regularly appeared among the top results for “abortion clinic” searches in Google Maps. Google also often failed to properly label advertisements from the groups on its main search page.

Crisis pregnancy centers’ prevalence in AI Overviews shows how the groups are extending their reach into a product that Google has framed as the future of search.

“In all three states, researchers documented examples of Google relying overwhelmingly on medically unsound CPC talking points to draft its top of search ‘AI Overviews,’” the Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan corporate and government watchdog organization, wrote in its report.

Health experts say pre-abortion ultrasounds are typically not medically necessary and add to the cost and scheduling burden of a time-sensitive procedure. For crisis pregnancy centers, though, the scans are an opportunity to persuade women to continue their pregnancies.

Melissa Fowler, chief program officer of the National Abortion Federation, said the organization’s information hotline has heard from people who have received inaccurate ultrasound results from crisis pregnancy centers that give patients the false impression they have more time to access care than they actually do — or that time has run out. “Either way, these inaccurate ultrasounds and deceptive tactics often leave patients confused and feeling as if they have no options. The ultrasounds provided at these centers often do not meet state requirements on waiting periods, which delays patients even further.”

In response to one query conducted for a user in Florida, Google’s AI Overviews suggested having a pre-abortion ultrasound performed at a crisis pregnancy center in Orlando, according to the report. Crisis pregnancy centers don’t provide referrals for abortions, the report said, meaning that any ultrasound performed at the center likely won’t count toward the state’s requirement. Women have six weeks to obtain abortions in Florida.

For another query, Google’s AI Overviews framed pre-abortion ultrasounds as a way to determine the viability of a pregnancy: “This can help prevent unnecessary abortions.” That echoes a common talking point from crisis pregnancy centers, which imply that women who will ultimately experience a miscarriage can avoid the time and expense of having an abortion, according to the Campaign for Accountability.

The organization also investigated the Google search ads served to women searching for pre-abortion ultrasounds in the three states. The group found that the majority of those ads were from crisis pregnancy centers offering scans that ultimately wouldn’t satisfy the states’ requirements, an attempt to intercept and deter women from having the procedure.

In response to a query about a pre-abortion ultrasound from a hypothetical 20-year-old woman living in Madison, Wisconsin, for example, Google served up an ad for Care Net Pregnancy Center of Milwaukee, according to the report.

The website advertised the crisis pregnancy center’s free ultrasound services and accurately stated that the law in Wisconsin requires patients to have an ultrasound before an abortion. But the group “neglects to say that their stated refusal to refer for abortions means that none of these free ultrasounds could ever be counted toward a state requirement,” the Campaign for Accountability said.

Similar ads were served to researchers simulating abortion seekers in Florida and Arizona. “All of these examples appear to violate Google’s misrepresentation policy,” the nonprofit said.

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