This fact check has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.

Google’s search results and its AI overview have been giving misleading answers to questions about the number of crimes committed by asylum seekers in the UK—quoting figures that were actually from 2017 in Germany.

There’s no evidence these figures reflect the current crime rate among asylum seekers in the UK, though official data is limited and neither the Office for National Statistics (ONS) nor the Home Office publish equivalent UK figures.

But in recent months we’ve seen what appear to be screenshots of some of these misleading Google search results circulated on social media.

After we contacted Google about this last week, the misleading results seem to be no longer appearing in searches on the topic.

A Google spokesperson told Full Fact: “We aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements. When issues arise—like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context—we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies.”

This isn’t the first time Full Fact has come across AI-generated responses or search results on internet platforms displaying misleading information. We’ve previously written about Amazon Alexa users being given incorrect information and a Google snippet wrongly claiming there were health benefits to eating glass.

Internet companies should take care not to promote false or misleading information, particularly if it has the potential to cause harm.

In recent months, Full Fact has seen a number of social media posts sharing what appear to be screenshots of Google results for searches about asylum seekers and crime in the UK. In particular, the screenshots appear to show results from Google’s ‘People also ask’ feature, which suggests specific questions and answers relating to someone’s initial search.

For example, one Facebook post shows the question “How many asylum seekers have committed crimes in the UK?”, followed by an answer saying: “The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries.”

When Full Fact searched “asylum seeker crime rates UK” in October, we were given exactly the same text in a ‘People also ask’ box, along with a link to a Wikipedia page with this text.

Another Facebook post appears to show a screenshot of a different ‘People also ask’ box where both the same answer and same Wikipedia page feature beneath the question “What percentage of UK crimes are committed by immigrants?”.

The same text was also highlighted in a Google featured snippet from the Wikipedia page, when we searched “How many asylum seekers have committed crimes in the UK?” in mid-November.

We were given similarly misleading information by Google’s ‘AI Overview’—its AI-generated summary that appears at the top of some search results—when we searched “asylum seeker crime UK” last week. The overview said “asylum seekers are overrepresented in some types of crime in the UK” and listed the same crime types and percentages as in the above text. It went on to say: “However, the Home Office doesn’t collect statistics on crime committed by asylum seekers or other immigrant groups. Instead we rely on news coverage and other anecdotal evidence.”