Google Discover is reportedly getting new AI (AI) capabilities in its personalized news and blog feed within the Google app on its smartphone. According to the report, the feed replaces news headlines and direct links to news articles with AI-generated summaries, similar to the AI overview feature in Search. This feature is said to remove mentions of a single publication and instead display multiple websites as quotes. Separately, Mountain View-based high-tech giants are reportedly experimenting with a bullet-style summary format that does not have AI.
Google Discover reportedly brought AI summary to news publishers' concerns
According to a report from TechCrunch, some users have found new features in Google Discover. Instead of looking at news headlines and lead images, they reportedly look at an outline of the news AI overview style. It is also said that the new format will remove any direct links to the publisher's mention or article, and instead simply display multiple logos of the publisher (which covered the news) as quotes.
Google's AI Overview Discover Feeds
Photo credit: TechCrunch
The publication contacted the company, and the spokesman reportedly said it was not a test, but a new feature currently available only in the US. TechCrunch highlighted that AI summary will be displayed on both Android and iOS devices in the US.
Google's new AI features come when news publishers struggle to get website and page traffic due to the rise of Google's AI products, such as AI chatbots and AI overviews and AI modes. Generating AI tools have begun eating global search traffic to retrieve information from publicly available web pages and provide answers to queries in a conversational way.
According to economists, global search traffic fell 15% (YOY) year-on-year in June, but the percentage of click-throughs on news websites and articles rose from 56% in May 2024 (when AI overviews were launched) to nearly 69% in May this year. Additionally, the report claims that global organic traffic to these websites has also fallen from over 2.3 billion in H1 in 2024 to under 1.7 billion.
In particular, the News/Media Alliance, a US-based association of nonprofits, issued a statement in May to Google's AI mode, calling it the “definition of theft.” The allegations were made because AI mode provides comprehensive answers to user queries without a list of URLs present in traditional search results.
Despite the concerns, Google has not resolved news publishers' concerns. Currently, Tech Giant does not offer a standalone method to prevent content from being collected by GoogleBot, according to company documents. The only way is to prevent GoogleBot from raw data. This will remove it from any form of search results, including web search, Google images, Discover and more.
