Google is rolling out its latest AI search tool – Google AI Mode – across the UK, in what a leading national media body has described as a “lose-lose” for trusted news sources.
The new tool generates results using artificial intelligence (AI), and instead of a list of search results showing links to other websites in blue type, people who choose “AI Mode” will be given an answer written in a conversational style, containing far fewer links to other pages.
The new search tool will not replace Google’s existing search platform, at least not yet, which will still be available to users who choose not to engage AI Mode, although the further shift to AIis undoubtedly is undoubteldy a concern for organisations from shopping sites to publishers who rely on search traffic or pay for a prime spot in Google’s search results.
The Daily Mail recently claimed the number of people who click its links from Google search results has fallen by around 50% on both desktop and mobile traffic since Google introduced its previous AI Overview feature, which summarises results.
Owen Meredith, chief executive of the News Media Association which represents the UK’s biggest newsbrands, said: “This is yet another example of Google using its dominant position in search to force news publishers to allow their content to be ingested for AI.
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“If publishers want to block Google’s search crawlers to stop their content from being exploited with no transparency, consent – or appropriate reward for original source material – they’ll be demoted from general search listings, causing catastrophic drops in audiences.
“It’s a lose-lose for sources of trusted verified news and information as the dominant tech firms continue to draw yet more web traffic into their walled gardens.”
Rosa Curling, director of the campaign group Foxglove, echoed Meredith’s concerns: “What the AI summary now does is makes sure that the readers’ eyes stay on the Google web page,” she said.
“And the advertising revenue of those news outlets is being massively impacted.”
Hema Budaraju, Google’s product manager for search, told the BBC the firm had not yet finalised how advertising revenue for AI Mode would work, or whether firms would be able to pay to be included in the response.
But the shift is already concerning many, with users generally less likely to click through to their websites via the links contained in an AI summary. – when the AI even sources information correctly. A recent study by the Pew Research Centre suggested that people only clicked a link once in every 100 searches when there was an AI summary at the top of the page., although Google claimed the research methodology in that study was flawed.
Google is launching the tool as a response to falling numbers of its own, with people increasingly turning to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT instead of traditional search engines to find quick, simple answers to questions, even though they are not always accurate.
The new tool, which uses its Gemini AI platform to generate its answers, has already been launched in the US and India and will roll out in the UK over the next few days.
Google said it already generates more than two billion AI Overview boxes every day in more than 40 languages, although not in the EU, where legislation bans it. There are also significant concerns about the environmental impact of increased AI use. Running AI requires huge data centres that use a lot of both power and water.
