Dread it, run from it, ads arrive all the same: Google’s AI Overviews feature, which is usually the first thing you’ll see these days when you search on the web, will soon see ads attached to the generated results. Specifically, this will apply to Malaysian users (along with several other regions in Southeast Asia), as announced by the company.
AI Overviews, Soon With Ads
AI Overviews, which Google claims now serves over 1.5 billion users globally, is a feature integrated into Google Search to provide summarized responses to user queries using generative AI. With commercial queries increasing within these overviews, Google is expanding the integration of ads directly into AI Overviews on both desktop and mobile platforms.
This rollout will include Malaysia, alongside the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia, with the English version launching first; users are expected to see ads later this year, the company confirms. As a matter of fact, the ads you’ll be seeing will likely adopt other AI tools from the software giant as well, such as Imagen (for image generation) and Veo (video generation).
While the addition of ads are inevitable, blocking the ads – at least on the desktop page – should be a relatively simple affair, so long as you have the adblockers installed on your browser of choice. If you want to go for a step further, you can even disable AI Overviews altogether with third-party methods, such as this one.
Pokdepinion: Inevitable, but I’m not going to just let it pollute my searches.
