Publishers have attempted to evaluate the threat to their fragile business models since Google redesigned its search engine and have called for government involvement. Google’s Artificial Intelligence Search Has Publishers Scrambling
Two months ago, Frank Pine searched Google for a link to a news article and the first thing he saw were paragraphs about the issue written by artificial intelligence. He would have to browse past them to see what he wanted.
Mr. Pine, executive editor of Media News Group and Tribune Publishing, which control 68 daily newspapers nationwide, was irritated by that encounter. Those paragraphs frighten him now.
Google said in May that all Americans would have access to the summaries created by artificial intelligence (A.I.) that aggregate news articles and blog posts related to the search query. And because of that modification, Mr. Pine and numerous other publication executives are concerned that the articles could seriously jeopardise their fragile economic model by drastically lowering Google traffic to their websites.
According to Mr. Pine, “it potentially chokes off the content creators.” He continued, saying that the AI Overviews feature felt like a step closer to generative AI taking the place of “the publications that they have cannibalised.”
In interviews, media executives claimed that Google had put them in a difficult situation. For some publications, Google search results might account for almost half of their traffic, therefore they want their sites to be included there. However, by doing so, Google will be able to incorporate their material in summaries of AI Overviews.
By prohibiting Google’s web crawler from releasing any content snippets from their websites, publishers can also attempt to defend their content from the search engine. However, their links would then appear with no description, which would discourage visitors from clicking.
They said that another option, which would be to refuse to have their content indexed by Google and to never show up on its search engine, may be disastrous for their company.
According to Renn Turiano, chief of product at Gannett, the nation’s biggest newspaper publisher, “we can’t do that, at least not right now.”
However, he claimed that AI Overviews “is tremendously destructive to everyone apart from Google, but notably to consumers, smaller publications, and enterprises large and small that employ search results.”
According to Google, its search engine continues to bring publishers value by driving billions of visitors to webpages. The business claims that even though it was obvious that customers were searching for news on current affairs, it did not display its artificial intelligence summary.
In an interview prior to the release of AI Overviews, Liz Reid, Google’s vice president of search, stated that positive results for publishers had been observed during testing.
“People do frequently click on the links in AI Overviews and explore,” the spokesperson stated. “A website with the AI Overview actually receives more traffic than one with a regular blue link alone.”
Google would restrict AI Overviews to a more limited range of search results, Ms. Reid stated in a blog post on Thursday afternoon, following some well-publicized failures. However, she also stated that the business remained dedicated to further refining the system.
The most recent point of contention between tech firms and publishers is the summaries produced by AI. A legal battle has also been sparked by the use of news items, questioning whether Google and OpenAI breached copyright laws by using the content without authorization to create their AI models.
In December, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news articles about the upkeep and training of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The Chicago Tribune was one of seven Media News Group and Tribune Publishing-owned newspapers that filed a comparable lawsuit against the same internet corporations. Microsoft and OpenAI have refuted any misconduct.
Google’s next effort to overtake rivals Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in the A.I. race is called AI Overviews.
Microsoft built Bing, its search engine, around generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) over a year ago. Initially, Google was more careful since it didn’t want to tamper with its cash cow. However, at its yearly developer conference in mid-May, the firm unveiled an ambitious deployment plan for the A.I. feature, stating that over a billion people would have access to the technology by the end of the year.
AI Overviews blend text excerpts from live links throughout the internet with assertions produced by A.I. models. The summaries, which provide thorough answers without requiring the user to ever move to another page, frequently include quotes from several websites while properly attributing their sources.
Since its launch, the tool hasn’t always been able to distinguish between satirical posts and factual content. It generated a stir online when it suggested that users eat rocks or put glue on pizza for a balanced diet.
In interviews, publishers stated that it was too soon to notice a change in Google traffic since the introduction of AI Overviews. However, in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, the journalistic/Media Alliance, a trade association representing 2,000 newspapers, asked the authorities to look into Google’s “misappropriation” of journalistic material and to halt the company’s release of AI Overviews.
Many publishers claimed that the launch highlighted the importance of building direct connections with readers, such as encouraging more people to visit their websites and applications directly and sign up for digital subscriptions, and to rely less on search engines.
The Atlantic’s CEO, Nicholas Thompson, announced that the publication was increasing its investments in all areas where it had a direct connection to readers, including email newsletters.
Newspapers including The Texas Tribune and The Washington Post have resorted to Subtext, a marketing start-up that facilitates text conversation between businesses and their readers.
The CEO of Subtext, Mike Donoghue, stated that media organisations were attempting to retain their most devoted fans instead of pursuing the broadest audiences. One of his clients, the New York Post, offers subscribers an exclusive perk whereby they may text staff sports reporters.
And there’s the copyright controversy. When OpenAI began striking arrangements with publishers after scraping news sites to create ChatGPT, things took an unexpected turn. It declared that it will pay businesses to access their material, including News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Associated Press. However, Google hasn’t yet inked any comparable agreements despite its ad technology helping publishers generate money. The internet behemoth has long opposed proposals for paying media companies for the material they produce, claiming that doing so would compromise the free nature of the internet.
The CEO of Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue and The New Yorker, Roger Lynch, stated, “You can’t opt out of the future, and this is the future.” “I only think it should happen under conditions that will protect creators; I’m not disputing whether it should happen or whether it will happen.”
He claimed that search was still “the lifeblood and majority of traffic” for publishers and that Congress might be able to help them with their problems. He has requested that legislators in Washington make it clear that using content for A.I. training is subject to licencing fees and does not qualify as “fair use” under current copyright laws.
Although The Atlantic’s Mr. Thompson announced a partnership with OpenAI on Wednesday, he still believes Google should compensate publishers as well. Prior to the release of AI Overviews, he expressed his desire for The Atlantic to be included in Google’s summaries “as much as possible” while acknowledging industry concerns.
He stated, “We anticipate a decrease in traffic as Google goes through this transition, but I believe that being a part of the new product will help us minimise how much it goes down.”