Artificial intelligence summaries are surfacing outdated UK government information because search tools are still pulling from old GOV.UK pages that were never fully retired, according to Department for Business and Trade content staff. In a GOV.UK blog post, senior content designer Giorgio Di Tunno and content operations lead Neil Starr warned that the issue is not just accuracy but trust: when AI systems present conflicting answers, users may assume the government itself is unreliable.

The problem was illustrated by searches for the cost of setting up a charity in the UK. According to the department staff, an AI overview cited incorporation fees of £13 online or £40 by post, figures taken from an old page that no longer reflects the current charges. The real cost is £100 online or £124 by post. The Register reported that when it repeated the search, Google’s AI overview first said incorporation was free and later produced a much wider estimate, neither of which was correct.

To reduce the risk, the department reviewed GOV.UK pages that had not been updated for five years, had drawn fewer than 11 views over that period, were supposed to contain current information and lacked an active owner. That exercise identified 150 pages, including material inherited from the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and those pages have now been redirected to archived versions, live GOV.UK content or relevant legislation. DBT is also trialling six-month review dates displayed on each page, a change the authors say users have responded to positively because it makes content provenance easier to judge.

The issue is not confined to business guidance. Mark Edwards, the Department for Education’s head of design, has separately cautioned that AI summaries can flatten complex public information into answers that are too narrow or incomplete. His warning reflects a broader shift in government communication: content now has to work not only for human readers but also for systems that scrape, paraphrase and repackage official material without control from the original publisher. GOV.UK’s own AI guidance and related insights publications show the government is already trying to adapt to that reality as it seeks to use AI safely while limiting the risks of distortion.

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Source: Noah Wire Services