Google is experimenting with Google AI-powered article previews on the Google News pages of certain participating publications in a new pilot program, the search giant announced on Wednesday.
News publishers in the pilot program also include Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, and The Times of India, as well as news agencies AFP and Reuters, and local affiliates such as L’Agence France 24, Europe1 radio, La Gaceta de Tucumán, and Large Network.
The goal of the new commercial partnership program is to “learn more about how AI can help drive a better and more engaged audience,” Google added in a blog post. Under the new AI pilot program, the company will collaborate with publishers to test new capabilities in Google News.
With AI-powered article overviews, Google says its users will get more context before opening an article. Even though AI-generated news summaries may result in fewer readers clicking through to articles, media outlets involved in the project will be paid directly by Google. They may be compensated for any loss of traffic to their websites.
The AI background article overviews will appear only on a participating publication’s Google News page, alongside other links to its site, not anywhere else in Google News or Search.
This isn’t Google’s first attempt at using AI to generate news summaries. The company introduced AI summaries in Discover, its main news feed in the Google search app, in July. This change removed a single headline from a major publication from the feed. Instead, they see multiple news publishers’ logos side by side in the top-left corner, along with an AI-generated summary for each source.
Audio briefings for listeners who would rather hear the news than read about it are also being tested through Google’s new pilot program.
The company said those features would include clear attribution and a link to articles. And Google is teaming up with other organizations such as Estadão, Antara, Yonhap, and The Associated Press to add real-time info and improve results within the Gemini app.
“As people’s news and information habits change, we’re focused on making it easier for people around the world to find their favorite publishers across our platforms and products,” Google wrote in the blog post. “We have been doing this work in consultation with websites and creators of various sizes, some with teams of dozens, others who are merely one person with a blog,” she said.
As part of Google’s Wednesday announcement, the company also shared that it is expanding its “Preferred Sources” feature globally, after launching it in the U.S. and India in August. It lets users choose their favorite news sites and blogs to display in the Top Stories section of Google search results.
The feature will be available to English-language users worldwide in the next few days, and Google expects to expand it to all supported languages early next year.
Now Google will also display links from your news subscriptions in their own carousel in the Gemini app over the next few weeks, with AI Overviews and AI Mode to follow.
With these functions that play so well with consumer behavior, however, comes the potential to trap readers in an ideological bubble, chaining them to a preferred worldview.
Google also reported that it’s adding more inline links in AI Mode. It’s also rolling out “contextual introductions” for embedded links — short explanations that help explain why a link might be worth exploring.
