'Existential crisis': how Google's shift to AI has upended the online news model
3 days ago
- #AI in journalism
- #Google search
- #publishing industry
- Financial Times CEO proposed a 'Nato for news' alliance to negotiate with AI companies.
- Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are reducing traffic to news sites by summarizing content directly.
- Daily Mail reported an 89% drop in click-through traffic due to AI Overviews.
- Publishers urge Google to be more transparent about AI traffic statistics.
- AI's impact on accuracy includes issues like 'hallucinations' and in-built bias.
- Apple had to correct AI summaries that falsely reported news events.
- Google claims AI in search drives more queries and quality clicks, contrary to third-party reports.
- Google Discover is replacing search as the main source of traffic but lacks quality for publishers.
- Publishers are battling AI companies over content use for training large language models.
- Some publishers have licensing deals with AI firms, while others are taking legal action.
- Publishers are also adopting AI tools in newsrooms and creating their own query-answering services.
- The focus is shifting from training AI to delivering live news, which could be lucrative.
- The industry seeks a balance between tech-driven changes and the value of trusted news.