AI-generated search results now deliver a distorted view of the industry to millions — and direct users straight to its critics.
Search for “salmon farm” on Google today and the result is striking — not for what it says, but for what it shows. In the UK, at least, users are presented with an AI-generated summary alongside a graphic image of a diseased, disfigured fish: its skin peeling, its body bloated, floating in murky water. Just to the side, a link appears — directing users not to a neutral source, but to a campaign site titled “Salmon Farming Crisis.” The combination is hard to ignore, and for many in the industry, will be hard to accept.
This is Google’s new “AI Overview” in action — a feature that replaces traditional search results with machine-generated answers scraped and paraphrased from elsewhere online. It’s billed as a helpful shortcut. But in practice, it’s steering millions of users toward a hostile account of one of the world’s most sustainable protein industries.
What’s more troubling is that this version of reality is now what millions will see first. These AI Overviews appear above all other content, presented not as opinion but as neutral truth — even when they lean heavily on sources with a clear ideological agenda. The example in this case links directly to WildFish, a well-known activist group that has long opposed salmon aquaculture.
For an industry that depends on public trust, investor confidence, and regulatory legitimacy, this is a serious threat. If the dominant narrative online becomes one of crisis and contamination, shaped by algorithms and cemented by AI, the space for honest debate narrows. Retailers get spooked. Consumers shift to competing proteins. Lawmakers, many of whom will never visit a farm themselves, take the digital consensus at face value.
The salmon sector has faced criticism before — some of it justified, much of it not. What’s new is the way AI is collapsing the difference between search engine and editorial voice. Instead of providing a gateway to a range of information, Google is now synthesising a version of the truth — and that version can be skewed, selectively sourced, and damaging.
Industry leaders must act. Not only to push back against misleading summaries and damaging images, but to ensure that accurate, current, and technically grounded information is available in forms that AI systems can parse and prioritise.
What’s at stake here is not just a search result. It’s the authority to define reality — and the power to shape an entire sector’s future with a few badly sourced sentences.