AI Overviews: the publisher predator we never saw coming

IN FOCUS

In today’s newsletter, we look at:

• Error 404: Web not found, killed by Google’s AI search
• Singapore’s data center crunch drives AI focus
• How merely scaling up AI models won’t lead to artificial general intelligence

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Hi there,

I distinctly recall attending a weekly meeting at my previous company in May 2023. We used these meetings to discuss new ideas, recent readings, and industry developments.

The topic of the day was the AI Overviews, which might have an impact on our business as a media company. 

We discussed how AI Overviews by search giants like Google or Bing would essentially be able to summarize our articles, offering readers the option to get the gist of an article without clicking on it.

This would impact the revenue model of publishers who relied on advertisements. 

I like to think we were among the first to predict that companies like Google might also turn AI Overviews into another ad opportunity, which could further diminish the organic reach of news websites.

A year later, this prediction has become a reality. In this week’s Big Story, my colleague Scott writes about the pain points media industry professionals are experiencing.

Crucially, the presence of AI Overviews could result in a 25% reduction in web traffic over the next year. Publishers, search engine optimization experts, and marketers are unhappy about having to rely on one or two channels (usually Google and Meta) for their web traffic, and now AI Overviews are set to take away more of these publishers’ traffic.

How then should media outlets navigate this change? AI search, according to editorial expert Andrew Thompson, “will reward longer-form content, more unique content, and content that comes from original expertise and experience.”

Moving on to this week’s Hot Take, I take a closer look at recent discussions on metacognition in generative AI. This comes in light of Bill Gates speaking up about the need for implementing metacognition, instead of merely scaling up current AI models.

— Lokesh

THE BIG STORY

Error 404: Web not found, killed by Google’s AI search

THE HOT TAKE

DEEP READS

FYI