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Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) introduced several promising generative artificial intelligence products during its I/O conference last week, but some creators are concerned its AI Overviews could disrupt web traffic, driving down organic visits and ad revenue.
AI Overviews, which was released in the U.S. last Tuesday, creates AI-generated summaries in response to Google Search queries.
Website publishers, creators and advertisers worry these summaries will discourage users from clicking on links to publisher websites.
Marc McCollum, chief innovation officer at Raptive, a creator media company, cited industry data showing a potential $2B revenue loss annually for publishers.
“In our analysis, Google’s AI Overviews is projected to significantly reduce creator traffic compared to their traditional search product,” McCollum said. “As presented, Google AI Overviews will be even more devastating than SGE Beta, its initial iteration—a summary of search results that pushes real search results much lower down on the page, removing the direct connection to creator content.”
However, Google maintains AI Overviews will not disrupt web traffic to publisher sites.
“And we see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query,” said Liz Reid, head of Google Search. “As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators. As always, ads will continue to appear in dedicated slots throughout the page, with clear labeling to distinguish between organic and sponsored results.”
Google also contends AI Overviews is increasing Search usage, allowing the opportunity for Google to steer even more traffic to various websites.
Google is not the only tech titan integrating AI into search engines. Microsoft (MSFT) has invested heavily in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, which has been integrated into its Bing search engine.
Social media giant Meta (META) has also integrated its Llama 3 model across its apps, including generating search results.
News publishers have been particularly wary of the rise of Gen-Ai in search engines. Despite this, a recent study from The Associated Press discovered that 70% of newsroom staffers are utilizing Gen-AI in some capacity to create content.
“Without access to human-created, high-quality content that is a relatively accurate portrayal of reality … the foundational models that fuel machine learning and generative AI applications of all types will malfunction, degrade and potentially even collapse, putting the entire system at risk,” said the Brookings Institution’s Courtney Radsch.