Weaponized AI Search Puts Google's Core Business Model at Risk

The weaponization of Google’s AI Overviews for scams marks a strategic escalation from generating mere factual errors to enabling deliberate user harm. This development reveals a critical vulnerability in generative search, shifting the threat model from simple misinformation to active, malicious exploitation. It highlights the challenge AI models face in discerning intent from a data landscape where SEO tactics now double as attack vectors against the core of Google’s primary product.

This vulnerability hands a potent new tool to malicious actors, putting immense pressure on Google’s trust and safety teams, whose traditional moderation playbooks are ill-equipped for this dynamic threat. The incidents could reshape the public's risk perception of generative AI, potentially accelerating regulatory scrutiny over automated content curation. For Google, the stakes are existential: failure to contain this erosion of trust could permanently damage its entire search-based business model.