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Google Stops Its Test of AI-Generated Images Inside AI Overviews

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A cartoon easel holding a white board covered in crude black crayon drawings of a bottle, a packet, a squash, a fork, a whisk and a microwave, with 'ADD FORK TO MICROWAVE' hand-lettered underneath in red crayon. A round mascot in Google's blue, red, yellow and green stands beside it holding a crayon, surrounded by snapped crayons and puddles of spilled paint.
The experiment drew its own step illustrations next to citations to the recipe sites it had summarised. Illustration: AI-generated.

Google has stopped a test that placed AI-generated illustrations inside AI Overviews. The recipe publisher Inspired Taste spotted it on 13 August 2026 on a query for their own spaghetti squash recipe, where the Overview showed generated cartoon steps summarising how to cook the dish. On 17 August, Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, replied on X: “This was a small experiment we’re no longer running.”

The test was not confined to one query. Inspired Taste posted examples across several recipe searches, each following the same pattern: a generated diagram of the method sitting directly beneath Google’s summary and its citation chip.

A Google AI Overview for 'how to cook spaghetti squash', with a generated eight-panel illustration headed 'Prep and Season' and 'Roast and Shred' showing an oven, a squash being sliced, seeds being scooped out and flesh scraped into strands, above a citation chip reading 'Forest Feast Suppe... +2'. A Google AI Overview for 'how to make hummus', with a generated panel headed 'Making Hummus' listing illustrated ingredients down the left and five numbered food-processor steps on the right, above a citation chip reading 'The Kitchn +1'. A Google AI Overview for 'how to make birria tacos', with three generated illustrated cards headed 'Create Adobo Sauce', 'Braise Beef Tender' and 'Assemble and Crisp Tacos', above a citation chip reading 'RecipeTin Eats +4'. A Google AI Overview for 'how to make cheesecake', with a generated flow diagram headed 'Ingredients and Crust Prep', 'Mixing and Baking' and 'Cooling and Final', linking illustrated stages with arrows, above a citation chip reading 'Sugar Spun Run +5'.
Click any shot to read it full size. Spaghetti squash, hummus, birria tacos and cheesecake: in each, Google's own artwork sits above the publishers it cites. Via: Inspired Taste, X.

Stein also drew a line that matters for reading any coverage of this. The test is not the Nano Banana image generation Google announced for AI Overviews in July, which only produces an image when a user explicitly asks for one. That feature is unaffected and still rolling out. What was pulled was Google generating illustrations unprompted, alongside citations to the pages it had drawn the steps from.

Inspired Taste’s objection was that the illustrations stand in for exactly the work a recipe page is built on, the testing, photography and video, and that a reader could reasonably assume one of the cited sites had produced the artwork.

There is nothing to change on your site as a result, and the takeaway is about how to read the next one of these. An AI feature appearing in the wild is not the same as an announced rollout, and this one lasted four days. If you see something new inside an Overview affecting how your content is represented, record it with a screenshot and a date before deciding it is a permanent change, because unannounced experiments can be withdrawn as quickly as they appear.

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