SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 15 - Google parent Alphabet

said on Thursday it was expanding its AI-generated summaries for

search queries to six new countries, just two months after it

rolled back some capabilities following a problem-riddled

launch.

The search giant made AI Overviews - which are displayed

atop a search results page before traditional links to the Web -

available to all U.S. users in May after spending one year

trialing a limited earlier version.

The feature was widely panned after screenshots of factually

inaccurate answers circulated across the internet, such as a

pizza recipe that listed glue as an ingredient and an answer

claiming that former U.S. President Barack Obama is Muslim.

Google acknowledged the "odd and erroneous overviews" and

announced updates to the product in a blog post in late May.

These updates added restrictions to which queries would display

AI answers and curbed user-generated content from websites like

Reddit ( RDDT ) from serving as source material for answers.

"I have enough evidence to say that quality is only

improving," Hema Budaraju, a senior director of product at

Google told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. She pointed to

data Google collects internally, which showed that users with

access to the feature reported higher levels of satisfaction and

searched for longer queries than users who did not.

AI Overviews is now coming to the Brazil, India, Indonesia,

Japan, Mexico and Britain, in local languages such as Hindi and

Portuguese.

Google is also adding hyperlinks to the feature. Websites

will be displayed to the right side of the AI-generated answer.

The company is also internally testing a further update that

would add links directly within the text of the overview.

The updates come amid concerns voiced by the media industry

about the possibility of losing out on referral traffic from

consumers who clicked through to publishers' websites. Budaraju

said the new update would have a "three-way benefit" for Google,

consumers and publishers.

Last week a U.S. judge ruled Google had an illegal monopoly

on search, clearing the way for a trial that could force the

breakup of Alphabet. AI advances from rivals like

Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI could pose an even bigger

threat.