Radhika Parashar
- Google Discover has started rolling out AI summaries of news on iOS, Android apps
- News publications have clocked a drop in organic traffic following the AI influx
- Several news publications have taken copyright-related legal actions against AI chatbots
Google is gradually rolling out AI-generated summaries for news content within Discover – its main news service within Search. As per a TechCrunch report, Google has started replacing multiple headlines related to a particular news search with an AI summary that puts information from different sources into a crisp paragraph or two.
Citing a Google spokesperson, TechCrunch claimed that the feature is not just a test but a genuine launch starting with the US market. Screenshots of Discover added to the report shows circular logos of the source publications on the top left corner of the AI summaries.
For now, it seems that Google is only gradually releasing this AI news summary feature on Discover. The development, however, may pose a significant threat to the traffic on news publications – eventually impacting their visibilities as well as revenues.
Newsletter
Get weekly updates on the newest crypto stories, case studies and tips right in your mailbox.
Earlier this month, UK-based PressGazette had reported that leading news organisations have been clocking zero-click searches ever since Google rolled-out the AI Overview feature on Search in May 2024. This feature essentially collects relevant data on any topic that a search is initiated on and drafts a piece of information using Generative AI.
Data by market intelligence platform SimilarWeb has been mentioned by other reports that indicate that news-related zero-click searches have grown from 56 percent to 69 percent in recent months – resulting in a consequent drop in the organic traffic landing on news websites.
In June, a report compiled by the Reuters Institute and the Oxford University had also highlighted that AI chatbots have started to emerge as quick news sources. The report further claimed that AI is expected to make access to news more affordable and quick – at the cost of carrying some inaccuracies.
While AI chatbots have taken the tech industry by storm, their equations with news publications and authors have remained strained.
In recent years, multiple news publications have initiated legal actions against AI chatbots over sourcing data without permissions to train their large language models (LLMs). The New York Times, for instance, sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 alleging copyright infringement of their intellectual properties.
