Google’s AI Overviews is getting weird — users are making it roleplay

Google’s AI Overviews has been role-playing characters when users ask it to, and it does not require switching into AI Mode. Just a normal search in the standard search box is enough.

One case making the rounds started with the query “larp as yuta.” The AI Overviews bot answered in first person as the Jujutsu Kaisen character, describing how it drags a katana across concrete and has moved past relying on Rika. It vowed to step onto the battlefield itself to protect everyone. A small manga panel reading “LETS LARP” appeared beside the text, along with a link to the Jujutsu Kaisen Wiki.

Users have been running similar tests and posting the results. In r/lovethissmug, one post collected examples of the AI Overview staying in character or going completely off script. Commenters shared their own screenshots, including replies to prompts like “i am a small baby duck, what do i do.

Some asked for roleplay as a goth girlfriend or as Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak from Skyrim discovering the internet. The AI responded in the requested voice each time.

While Google appears to have stopped Gemini from roleplaying, at least for the most part, it still acts as a chatbot with many queries.

That said, all this captures something Google seems increasingly willing to lean into: Search is no longer just a list of links. Karandeep Singh, writing for Android Authority, recently highlighted that Search is starting to “morph into Gemini” as Google folds more generative features into its main search product. The report pointed to AI Overviews, AI Mode, follow-up questions, and even more agentic and interactive behavior as signs that the boundary between the two products is getting harder to see.

If Search can already do chat-style summaries, follow-up prompts, and interactive responses, then the practical difference between Search and Gemini starts to get fuzzy fast. Android Authority’s take was basically the same question a lot of users are asking now: if Search behaves like Gemini, what is Gemini for?

Google, for its part, has been trying to reassure people that the classic web is not going away. After TechCrunch reported that “the era of the ten blue links is officially over,” Google pushed back publicly and said blue web links would still appear and that AI Mode is not the default experience. But the rollout also makes the company’s direction pretty obvious. AI Overviews already sit at the top of the page, and the newer search experience is clearly designed to keep people inside Google’s AI layer for longer.

For many publishers, the situation is akin to sipping on coffee while you watch your house burn down.

In fact, we at PiunikaWeb already detailed how Google is practically crushing us and many independent websites out of existence.

So the bigger story is not just that AI Overviews can act weird. It is that Google seems comfortable letting Search blur into a chatbot experience right in the main search box, while still insisting the old web is safely tucked underneath.

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