Google AI Overviews for Tobacco and Asbestos Firms Draw From Company Websites

Google AI Overviews for Philip Morris International described the company as "a leading international tobacco company working to transition from cigarettes to smoke-free products" and stated it is focused on a "future without cigarettes" while reducing post-consumer waste and improving supply-chain sustainability, citing the company's own website.

University of Sydney public health professor Becky Freeman examined the summaries and said they amounted to "a regurgitation of Philip Morris International's PR materials" with no mention of negative press. She added that the overview gave the impression Philip Morris International is "just an everyday, run-of-the-mill company that is doing its best to run sustainably" and never mentioned how the company lied about smoking being addictive.

U.S. court to have misled the public about the health risks of smoking over decades, despite internal research dating back to the 1980s that proved Philip Morris knew there were harms.

More recently, PMI has rapidly invested in vapes and its Zyn-branded nicotine pouches, whose proliferation is understood to have contributed to rising rates of nicotine use and addiction in young people. Similar patterns appeared in other searches. A Google AI Overview for British American Tobacco stated the company was continuing to focus on developing its "A Better Tomorrow" strategy to reduce harms, linking back to the company's own website.

An overview for James Hardie described it as a "global leader" and originally Australian business that "pioneered asbestos-free fibre cement," again linking heavily to the company's own website. Google does not allow companies to pay to directly tweak how information about their brand is provided in AI Overviews.

" After the ABC contacted Google using the Philip Morris example, a later overview added the note: "Note: Philip Morris International is often classified as a 'Big Tobacco' company and has faced criticism regarding its marketing tactics in various regions," linking to Wikipedia.

Founder of Melbourne online marketing agency StudioHawk Harry Sanders said LLMs work by directing "fan-out queries" which are "a bunch of different Google searches" to understand user intent. He noted that AI search summaries can change based on the wording of the question, what's happening in the news, who is searching, or at what point in time they search.

Queensland University of Technology researcher Dr Ashwin Nagappa said businesses can structure websites in a "neat" or "explainer" kind of way to help AI ingest information.

0 project. " Google said it did not prioritise commercial sources in AI overviews but draws from the sources that are deemed the most reliable and helpful depending on the exact search query. Google has previously confirmed it has guardrails in place for certain topics like health and hard news where it aims not to show users AI overviews.

Dr Nagappa stated there is no policy or regulation that says to Google that you need to be careful about or how to present certain kind of data.