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Remember back in 2018, when Google removed \u201cdon\u2019t be evil<\/a>\u201d from its code of conduct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been living up to that removal lately. At its annual I\/O in San Francisco this week, the search giant finally lifted the lid on its vision for AI-integrated search \u2014 and that vision, apparently, involves cutting digital publishers off at the knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google\u2019s new AI-powered search interface, dubbed \u201cSearch Generative Experience,\u201d or SGE for short, involves a feature called \u201cAI Snapshot.\u201d Basically, it\u2019s an enormous top-of-the-page summarization feature. Ask, for example, \u201cwhy is sourdough bread still so popular?\u201d \u2014 one of the examples that Google used in their presentation \u2014 and, before you get to the blue links that we\u2019re all familiar with, Google will provide you with a large language model (LLM) -generated summary. Or, we guess, snapshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoogle\u2019s normal search results load almost immediately,\u201d The Verge\u2019s <\/em>David Pierce explains<\/a>. \u201cAbove them, a rectangular orange section pulses and glows and shows the phrase \u2018Generative AI is experimental.\u2019 A few seconds later, the glowing is replaced by an AI-generated summary: a few paragraphs detailing how good sourdough tastes, the upsides of its prebiotic abilities, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the right,\u201d he adds, \u201cthere are three links to sites with information that Reid says \u2018corroborates\u2019 what\u2019s in the summary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As it goes without saying, this format of search, where Google uses AI tech to regurgitate the internet back to users, is wildly different from how the search-facilitated internet works today. Right now, if you Google that same query \u2014 \u201cwhy is sourdough bread still so popular?\u201d \u2014 you\u2019d be met with a more familiar scene: a featured excerpt from whichever website won the SEO race (in this case, that website was British Baker<\/em><\/a>), followed by that series of blue links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first glance, the change might seem relatively benign. Often, all folks surfing the web want is a quick-hit summary or snippet of something anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s not unfair to say that Google, which in April, according to data from SimilarWeb<\/a>, hosted roughly 91 percent of all search traffic, is somewhat synonymous with, well, the internet. And the internet isn\u2019t just some ethereal, predetermined thing, as natural water or air. The internet is a marketplace, and Google is its kingmaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As such, the demo raises an extremely important question for the future of the already-ravaged journalism industry: if Google\u2019s AI is going to mulch up original work and provide a distilled version of it to users at scale, without ever connecting them to the original work, how will publishers continue to monetize their work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoogle has unveiled its vision for how it will incorporate AI into search,\u201d tweeted The Verge\u2019s<\/em> James Vincent<\/a>. \u201cThe quick answer: it\u2019s going to gobble up the open web and then summarize\/rewrite\/regurgitate it (pick the adjective that reflects your level of disquiet) in a shiny Google UI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research has shown that<\/a> information consumers hardly ever make it to even the second page of search results, let alone even the bottom of the page. And worse, it\u2019s not like Google\u2019s taking clicks away from its longtime information merchants by hiring an army of human content writers to churn out summarization. Google\u2019s new search interface, which is built on a model that\u2019s already been trained by way of boatloads upon boatloads of unpaid-for human output, will seemingly be swallowing even more human-made content and spitting it back out to information-seekers, all the while taking valuable clicks away from the publishers that are actually doing the work of reporting, curating, and holding powerful interests like Google to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of now, it\u2019s unclear whether or how Google plans to compensate those publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an emailed statement to Futurism, a Google spokesperson said that \u201cwe\u2019re introducing this new generative AI experience as an experiment in Search Labs to help us iterate and improve, while incorporating feedback from users and other stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we experiment with new LLM-powered capabilities in Search, we\u2019ll continue to prioritize approaches that will allow us to send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked specifically whether the company has plans to compensate publishers for any AI-regurgitated content, Google had little in response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have plans to share on this, but we\u2019ll continue to work with the broader ecosystem,\u201d the spokesperson told Futurism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Publishers, however, are extremely wary of these changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf this actually works and is implemented in a firm way,\u201d wrote RPG Site<\/em> owner Alex Donaldson<\/a>, \u201cthis is literally the end of the business model for vast swathes of digital media lol.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day, there are a lot of questions that Google needs to answer here, not the least being that AI systems, Google\u2019s included<\/a>, spew fabrications<\/a> all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Silicon Valley giant has long claimed that its goal is to maximize access to information<\/a>. SGE, though, seemingly seeks to do something quite different \u2014 and if the company doesn\u2019t figure out a way to compensate publishers for the labor it\u2019ll be gleaning from the journalists, the effects on the public\u2019s actual access to information could be catastrophic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Updated with comment from Google.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n READ MORE: <\/strong>The AI takeover of Google Search starts now<\/em><\/a> [The Verge<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n More on Google: <\/strong>We Interviewed the Engineer Google Fired for Saying Its AI Had Come to Life<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This could change everything. MAY 11 by MAGGIE HARRISON (futurism.com) Image by Getty \/ Futurism Remember back in 2018, when Google removed \u201cdon\u2019t be evil\u201d from its code of conduct? It\u2019s been living up to that removal lately. At its annual I\/O in San Francisco this week, the search giant finally lifted the lid on… Continue reading