Google’s artificial intelligence system has wrongly blamed European aircraft manufacturer Airbus for the fatal Air India crash on Thursday, which actually involved a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The search engine behemoth has been pushing its AI Overviews onto millions of users in recent months, automatically summarizing news, articles, and other websites within the well-known Google Search screen.
Google says AI Overviews have resulted in a “profound shift” in the way people use its search engine, making it one of the “most successful launches in Search in the past decade.”
That is perhaps because Google thrusts its AI Overviews front and center of the search screen, with the promise that users can “ask Google anything and get a helpful response.”
What the casual users might not realize, however, is that AI Overviews are littered with frequent mistakes and misinformation. A small warning at the bottom of the overview, which reads: “AI responses may include mistakes,” is easily missed.
“I’m not a lawyer, but this feels a bit like it should be illegal to me.”
Lily Ray, SEO expert
What Did Google’s AI Overview Claim?
In the hours after the tragic crash of Air India flight AI171 on June 12, which claimed the lives of 241 out of 242 people on board and at least eight people on the ground, AI Overviews made a mistake that could have big legal repercussions for Google.
Asked when the most recent fatal crash involving an Airbus aircraft was, AI Overviews reportedly provided the following response:
“The most recent fatal Airbus crash occurred on Thursday, June 12, 2025, in India, involving an Air India flight. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff in Ahmedabad, killing a significant number of passengers and crew members. The crash involved an Airbus A330-243, bound for London with 242 people on board.”
Why Was Airbus Blamed?
Anyone who has used AI models like ChatGPT or Google’s very own Gemini will know that these systems have a confirmation bias issue, seemingly trying to prove the human user right and making up facts to back themselves up.
In response to the issue, search engine expert Lily Ray said on X: “I’m not a lawyer, but this feels a bit like it should be illegal to me.”
What’s troubling is that there were literally thousands of news articles available on the web that provided the correct information in an easy-to-read format; Google chose instead to display incorrect and potentially defamatory information to users.
Google responds
As is often the case when users spot an error in AI Overviews, it appears that Google has manually displayed its AI response for queries involving the Air India plane crash.
Google said in response to inquiries about the Airbus AI Overview: “As with all Search features, we rigorously make improvements and use examples like this to update our systems. This response is no longer showing.”
“We maintain a high-quality bar with all Search features, and the accuracy rate for AI Overviews is on par with other features like Featured Snippets.”
The lesson here is that users should be skeptical of responses they see in AI Overviews and should, instead, delve deeper, seeking authoritative websites from which Google’s faulty AI is feeding off and then presenting incorrect information.
