Report from TechCrunch
In Brief – Google has announced a pilot program with news publishers to test AI-powered article overviews as part of the Google News pages. Participating outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País, and the Washington Post, will work with Google to experiment with features designed to deepen user engagement while ensuring clear attribution and direct links back to articles. The publishers will receive payments from Google because AI summaries may lead to traffic declines. The pilot also includes audio briefings for users who prefer listening and collaborations with organizations such as AP, Yonhap, Antara, and Estadão to improve real-time information in the Gemini app. Alongside the news publisher pilot, Google will provide greater support for publishers with their paying audiences with a new subscription-highlighting feature that will surface links from outlets users subscribe to, prioritizing them in search results and presenting them in a dedicated carousel. The search giant is also increasing links in AI Mode and adding short “contextual introductions” that explain why a linked source is relevant.
Context – The AI chatbot-search convergence is underway. And it’s going to be bumpy. The European Commission recently announced an antitrust investigation of how Google uses content from publisher websites to provide AI answers to search queries without compensating the publisher or allowing them to freely refuse to participate. That move followed months of complaints from publishers who claim that Google’s use of generative AI hurts their website traffic and ad revenue. Google responds that users like AI-enabled services and that better responses to search queries leads to more searches and more traffic overall. The company also argues that AI chatbots are being used like search, a development that was a key point in the US Google Search antitrust trial. Publishers with ad-based revenue models might also consider that Google, with its hugely successful business model built on ads, may be the AI company most likely and capable of successfully integrating ads and clicks into the emerging AI-infused internet ecosystem.