Do the British public trust search engine AI summaries?

Christien Pheby - February 18th, 2025

Last year, search engines rolled out “AI overviews” – short summaries of topics that appear at the top of the results generated when users input a query. They don’t appear with every search, but data from YouGov Surveys indicates that most Britons have encountered them at some point or another: when we asked, 53% said they had seen these summaries often, and just 20% said they had never seen them.

Do Britons who have seen these summaries find them helpful? Broadly, yes. Some 52% said they found them useful, while 32% did not.

Younger users aged 18-34 were most likely to say they found these overviews useful (61%), while those aged 55 or older were less keen on average (37%). When asked about whether the summaries are relevant to the queries, 58% said they were – although again, this increases among younger Britons (67%) and decreases among older ones (39%). Could facility with - or scepticism of - technology play a role in how useful AI overviews are?

We also asked these Britons if they found search engine AI summaries trustworthy or not. The developers behind AI tools are open about the fact that their LLMs can make mistakes. Nevertheless, respondents were more likely to find these results credible than not.

Some 42% find these summaries trustworthy, while 35% do not. This does change along age lines: younger Britons are more likely to put their faith in search engine overviews, while older Britons are more sceptical.

Finally, we asked if users wanted to see the number of AI summaries increase or decrease. Just 18% wanted to see more, 33% wanted the number to stay the same, and 38% wanted to see them decrease. The public might find these summaries useful at the moment, but they might feel differently if they were returned with every query. A little AI may go a long way.

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YouGov polled 2,001 British adults online on 13-14 February BST. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, education level, region, and social grade. The margin of error is 2% for the overall sample. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Self-serve.

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Do the British public trust search engine AI summaries?