Google is testing AI-powered article overviews on participating publications’ Google News pages as part of a new pilot program, the search giant announced on Wednesday.
News publishers participating in the pilot program include Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Post, among others.
The purpose of the new commercial partnership program is to “explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences,” Google said in a blog post. As part of the new AI pilot program, the company will work with publishers to experiment with new features in Google News.
By adding AI-powered article overviews, Google says users will get more context before they click through to read an article. While AI-generated summaries may lead to fewer clicks on news articles, publications participating in the commercial pilot program will receive direct payments from Google, which could make up for the potential decrease in traffic to their sites.
The AI-powered article overviews will only appear on participating publications’ Google News pages, and not anywhere else on Google News or in Search.
This isn’t the first time that Google has introduced AI summaries for news. In July, the company rolled out AI summaries in Discover, the main news feed inside Google’s search app. With this change, users no longer see a single headline from a major publication in the feed. Instead, they see the logos of multiple news publishers in the top-left corner, followed by an AI-generated summary that cites those sources.
Google is also experimenting with audio briefings for people who prefer listening to the news rather than reading it, as part of the new pilot program.
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The company says these features will include clear attribution and a link to articles.
Additionally, Google is partnering with organizations such as Estadão, Antara, Yonhap, and The Associated Press to incorporate real-time information and enhance results in the Gemini app.
“As the way people consume information evolves, we’ll continue to improve our products for people around the world and engage with feedback from stakeholders across the ecosystem,” Google wrote in its blog post. “We’re doing this work in collaboration with websites and creators of all sizes, from major news publishers to new and emerging voices.”
As part of Google’s Wednesday announcement, the company said that it’s launching its “Preferred Sources” feature globally after first launching it in the U.S. and India in August. The feature allows users to select their favorite news sites and blogs to appear in the Top Stories section of Google search results.
In the coming days, the feature will be available for English-language users worldwide, and Google plans to roll it out to all supported languages early next year.
Google will now also highlight links from your news subscriptions and show these links in a dedicated carousel in the Gemini app in the coming weeks, with AI Overviews and AI Mode to follow.
While these features make it easy for users to access news from their preferred sources, they also risk confining them to an ideological bubble that limits their exposure to different perspectives.
Google also announced that it’s increasing the number of inline links in AI Mode. Additionally, it’s introducing “contextual introductions” for embedded links, which are brief explanations that explain why a link could be useful to explore.
