Artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere in Google’s services these days, whether people want them or not and sometimes even in places where they don’t really make sense. Google’s latest test appears to be giving articles the AI treatment in Google Discover. The Verge It was observed that some articles were being displayed in Google Discover with AI-generated titles different from the original post. And to no one’s surprise, some of these headlines are misleading or just plain wrong.
For example, a rewritten headline claimed “Steam Machine price revealed”, but Ars Technica The original title of the article was “Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to cost like one.” No costs have been shared yet for the hardware, either in that post or anywhere else from Valve. In our own explorations, Engadget The staff also found that Discover was providing original headlines with AI-generated summaries. In both cases, the content is tagged as “generated with AI, which may make mistakes.” But it would certainly be good if the company did not use AI at all in this situation and thus avoided mistakes altogether.
Example The Verge Google representative Mallory Deleon told the publication that it was apparently “a small UI experiment for a subset of Discover users.” “We’re testing a new design that changes the location of existing headings to make topic descriptions easier to digest before looking for links on the web.” It sounds innocuous enough, but Google has a history of hostility toward online media, given its frequent role as a mediator between publishers and readers. Web publishers have made several attempts over the years to receive compensation from Google for displaying parts of their content, and in at least two instances, Google has responded by cutting those sources from search results and later claiming that showing the news doesn’t do much for the bottom line of its advertising business.
For those of you who really want more AI in your Google search experience, you’re in luck. AI Mode, the chatbot that has already been called “stealthy” by the News Media Alliance, is getting an even more symbiotic integration into mobile search platforms. Google Search vice president of product Robbie Stein posted on X yesterday that the company is testing accessing AI mode on the same screen as AI Overview, rather than the two services existing in separate tabs.
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