Google put this question here, not us. It sits under how to get rid of People Also Ask on Google because that’s where Google shows it: in our 27 September 2026 depth pass, “Are the people also ask section AI?” came up as a child of “How to get rid of people also ask on Google?”. The honest answer splits in two. The questions come from real searches. The answers used to be excerpts from one page, and now they are mostly AI-written summaries that cite several pages.
Why Google files this under “get rid of it”
Google doesn’t explain why it pairs one question with another, so this part is our read. People who want the box gone often want it gone because they think it’s AI. When we searched “how to get rid of people also ask” live on 27 September 2026, “Are the people also ask section AI?” was the first question in the box. Opening a question added more in the same vein, including “Can I turn off AI on Google?”. The suspicion is common, and for the answers it turns out to be mostly correct.
Are the questions AI?
Not in the chatbot sense. Google’s patent on related questions (US9213748B1, granted in 2015) describes a question database made of “search queries that have previously been submitted by users” in question form, matched to your search through the queries that led people to the pages ranking for it. Google hasn’t published the exact recipe it runs today, and the picks can wander off topic fast. We cover the details in where People Also Ask questions come from.
Are People Also Ask answers AI?
Mostly, yes, and the switch happened fast.
For years the answers were featured snippets: an excerpt lifted from one web page, with a link to that page. Google’s documentation still says featured snippets “can also appear within a related questions group (also known as ‘People Also Ask’)” (Google Search Central).
Then Google started writing the answers itself. According to Search Engine Roundtable (3 July 2025), Google began powering some of them with AI Overviews in November 2024. The best numbers on the shift come from Mark Williams-Cook of AlsoAsked, who shared them on LinkedIn; we’re relaying Search Engine Roundtable’s reports of those posts:
- July 2025: 12.6% of People Also Ask answers were AI-generated, and the rest were website-cited featured snippets.
- August 2026: 86% were AI Overviews.
- First week of September 2026: 97%, from a sample of 19.2 million English-language queries (Search Engine Roundtable, 9 September 2026).
In the same report, Saeed Khosravi of Allintitle said his tool’s data showed the answers were 100% AI-generated from August 2026. Williams-Cook’s forecast: “It seems highly likely we are on track for 100% shortly.”
What we saw in our own harvest
Our harvest on 27 September 2026 lines up. All 149 questions we collected across three searches came with an answer, and 147 of them had a source. But the answers didn’t read like excerpts. 145 of the 149 cited more than one page, and together they linked out 1,181 times to 429 different sites, just under 8 links per answer. Two answers were labelled “AI Mode replied:” and carried no link at all.
The neatest proof came from Google itself. For the search “people also ask”, one question in the box was “Are people also ask AI?”. Google’s answer opened: “Yes, Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) answers are now nearly 100% AI-generated.” It credited Search Engine Watch.
One more detail: no AI Overview appeared at the top of any of the three result pages we harvested. The AI was there anyway, folded inside the box.
How is this different from an AI Overview?
Same technology, different job and placement. AlsoAsked counts these answers as AI Overviews, and Google’s help page says AI Overviews “use generative AI”. The differences are in when and where you see them:
- The AI Overview at the top answers the search you typed. Google says AI Overviews “are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don’t trigger” (Google Search Central).
- A People Also Ask answer responds to a related question, and you only see it when you click that question open.
- Both point to sources. In our harvest, answers inside the box usually cited several sites rather than one.
We compare the two features side by side in People Also Ask vs AI Overviews.
Can you trust the answers?
Treat them the way you’d treat any AI Overview. Google’s help page is blunt: “AI Overviews can and will make mistakes.” Its advice is to check important information in more than one place and to click the links to the supporting sources. The upside of the new format is that each answer usually points to several pages, so checking takes one click. More in how accurate People Also Ask answers are.
Can you switch the AI answers off?
No. There’s no setting for People Also Ask, and Google’s help page says of its search features: “Features cannot be turned off.” What you can do is drop the whole box, AI answers included. Google’s Web filter shows only text-based links, and in our 27 September 2026 test the Web view had no People Also Ask box at all. You can make that view your default with the udm=14 parameter. The steps are in how to get rid of People Also Ask.
What this means if you write for search
A classic PAA answer was one page’s excerpt, so one site won the spot. Now a single answer usually draws on several pages, which makes being one of the cited sources the thing to aim for. To see which sites Google cites for a set of questions, PAA Box is our tool: its “with answers” mode, part of PAA Box Pro (coming soon), saves Google’s answer and source for each question it expands, up to four levels deep. It’s live in the Chrome Web Store as BlogStorm: People Also Ask Tool.