Hadley Simmons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google will reportedly replace news headlines in Google Discover with AI-generated titles.
- These AI titles are often inaccurate, overly reliant on clickbait, or lacking context.
- Google has apparently clarified that this is just a “small UI experiment” for now.
Google’s Discover page is a dedicated hub for news articles and other information, giving you a convenient way to catch up on your favorite topics. The company has previously introduced polarizing AI-generated summaries to Discover, but this time it’s going one step further and featuring some truly awful AI-generated headlines.
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The Verge We discovered that Google is replacing news headlines in Discover with AI-generated titles. Unfortunately, these AI alternatives are ridiculously bad and often wrong. These headlines are often boring or go deep into clickbait territory.
for example, pc gamer The story’s original title was “‘Child Labor Is Invincible’: Baldur’s Gate 3 Players Discover How to Build an Army of Unkillable Children Through the Power of Polymorph and German Media Law.” However, Google replaced this headline with the AI-generated title “BG3 Player Exploits Children.”
on the other hand, 9to5Google The title of the article is “Don’t buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger expecting it to be faster. Buy a ‘slow’ charger instead.” Google decided to replace this with the AI-generated headline “Qi2 slows down older Pixels.”
Google’s AI also generated the title “Steam Machine Price Revealed.” ars technica The price has not been disclosed at all. Either way, the search giants are churning out four-word headlines that are mostly poor quality.
A Google representative said: The Verge Indicates that this is not a full-fledged feature release and is just a test at this time.
These screenshots demonstrate a small UI experiment with a subset of Discover users. We’re testing a new design that repositions existing headings to make it easier to understand topic details before exploring links from across the web.
This statement suggests that these AI-generated titles will not see wide release, at least not in their current state. Nevertheless, it’s concerning that Google saw fit to push this experiment out to everyone in the first place when the results were clearly terrible. There’s also no visible label or disclosure that this is an AI-generated title, nor is there any disclosure that Google, not the publisher, is behind these headlines. As a result, many readers are fooled by low-effort clickbait titles and end up angry with publications.
Nevertheless, we asked Google for more details about this experiment, whether there are plans for a larger release, and whether merchants can opt out of the feature. We will update this article if we hear from Google.
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