Google’s Discover Page Now Shows AI-Written News Summaries

Google has quietly introduced AI-generated news summaries on the Discover page of its Google mobile app. As reported by TechCrunch, the app’s Discover page has started replacing headlines from major publications with AI-generated summaries, with just the logos from the news publishers indicating where the information comes from.

Google confirmed to TechCrunch that these AI summaries are currently only appearing on the US version of the Discover app, with a higher probability to see them on sports and entertainment stories. The app clearly labels these summaries as “generated with AI, which can make mistakes.”

TechCrunch reports that the Google Discover page is also using generative AI in other places without clearly informing users about it: As an example, some stories will come with bullet points below the headline detailing the main highlights, while other stories may be grouped with other related news.

The Google Discover page is an important source of traffic for online publications, and these new AI-generated summaries will likely be a source of concern for media companies already seeing their audience shrink. The AI Overviews and AI mode in Google Search have already started to transform the search engine into an “answer engine” that makes visiting websites superfluous.

Last month, Google also launched an experimental Audio Overviews feature that generates conversational audio responses for select search queries. While these AI features can be great for consumers, Google and other AI startups will need a healthy ecosystem of news publishers if they want to continue using their content to generate their AI overviews.