Misleading AI Headlines on Discover Could Impact Website Traffic, Experts Warn
Discover’s AI-generated headlines could distort content meaning, affecting user engagement and website traffic, experts say.
image for illustrative purpose
After the news came out that some headlines on Google Discover are being rewritten by AI, thus making it possible to have misleading or incorrect summaries, the tech giant is under fire. A The verge report has revealed one of the changes, stating that some of the AI-generated headlines were far off from the original articles.
One of the examples is Ars Technica's article about Valve's Steam Machine which the original headline says, “Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one” while on Google Discover the AI headline merely said, “Steam Machine Price Revealed,” giving no indication that no price was actually revealed. Engadget too has mentioned cases where Google presented the original headlines along with AI-written summaries, stating “Generated with AI, which can make mistakes” quite clearly.
When the matter was brought to Google, Mallory Deleon, a company spokesperson, said to The Verge, “We are conducting a test for a new interface where the existing headlines will be repositioned to help users grasp the details of the topics before they dig into links from all over the internet.”
The trial has led to the raising of concerns by the publishers. The opponents maintain that if AI headlines change the original meaning, then there will be a corresponding decrease in user engagement and in the number of people coming from Discover, which is one of the main sources of web traffic. The over-dependency on AI could, as they warn, ruin both the accuracy of the content and the trust of the users.
The tech industry people say that although AI can help in the content delivery, the overuse of it can be a problem. Therefore, it is very important to control the AI's presence in the different systems, as the machine learning systems continue to be vulnerable to mistakes, misunderstanding, and incorrect wording.
In an effort to promote its AI projects, among which the Gemini platform is included, Google has been doing a lot of talking and the latter has been one of the main points of the conversation, i.e., the balance between automation and human editors. The ongoing Discover trial is a perfect example of the conflict between new technologies and correctness of information, which is particularly critical for publishers since they rely on being precise and faithful with their headlines.
