OTTAWA \u2014 News publishers say the AI-generated summaries that now top many Google search results are cutting into their online traffic \u2014 and experts are still flagging concerns about the summaries\u2019 accuracy as they warn the internet itself is being reshaped.<\/p>\n
When Google rolled out its AI Overview feature last year, its mistakes \u2014 including one suggestion to use glue to make pizza toppings stick better \u2014 made headlines. One expert warns concerns about the accuracy of the feature\u2019s output won\u2019t necessarily go away as the technology improves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those very sweeping technological changes that has changed the way we … search, and therefore live our lives, without really much of a big public discussion,\u201d said Jessica Johnson, a senior fellow at McGill University\u2019s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a journalist and as a researcher, I have concerns about the accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While users have flagged mistakes in the AI-powered summaries, there is no academic research out there yet defining the extent of the problem. A report released by the BBC earlier this year examining AI chatbots from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Perplexity found \u201csignificant inaccuracies\u201d in their summaries of news stories, although it did not look at Google AI Overviews specifically.<\/p>\n
In small font at the bottom of its AI summaries, Google warns users that \u201cAI responses may include mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company maintains the accuracy of the AI summaries is on par with other search features, like those that provide featured snippets. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs people use AI Overviews, we see they\u2019re happier with their results, and they come to Google to even ask more of their questions,\u201d a Google spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cThe vast majority of AI Overviews are highly factual and we\u2019ve continued to make improvements to both the helpfulness and quality of responses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chirag Shah, a professor at the University of Washington\u2019s information school specializing in AI and online search, said the error rate is due to how AI systems work.<\/p>\n
Generative AI doesn\u2019t understand concepts the way people do. Instead, it works by making predictions based on massive amounts of training data. Shah said that \u201cno checking\u201d takes place after the systems retrieve the information from documents and before they generate the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if those documents are flawed?\u201d he said. \u201cWhat if some of them have wrong information, outdated information, satire, sarcasm?\u201d<\/p>\n
A human being would know that someone who suggests adding glue to a pizza is telling a joke, he said, but an artificial intelligence system would not.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a \u201cfundamental problem\u201d that can\u2019t be solved by \u201cmore computation and more data and more time,\u201d Shah said \u2014 and better technology could actually make the problem worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anything, I worry that they will get so good \u2026 people will get comfortable enough with them that we will just trust them beyond what their abilities are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said online searches in general are changing in a fundamental way. As Google integrates AI into its popular search function, other AI companies\u2019 generative AI systems, such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, are acting as search engines themselves.<\/p>\n
Search engines were designed originally to help users find their way around the internet, Shah said, but now the goal of those who design online platforms and services is to get the user to stay in the same system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that gets consolidated \u2026 that\u2019s essentially the end of the free web,\u201d he said. \u201cI think this is a fundamental and a very significant shift in the way not just the search but the web, the internet operates. And that should concern us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
A study by the Pew Research Center from earlier this year found users were less likely to click on a link when their search resulted in an AI summary. While users clicked on a link 15 per cent of the time in response to a traditional search result, they only clicked on a link eight per cent of the time if an AI summary was included.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s cause for alarm for news publishers, both in Canada and abroad.<\/p>\n
Paul Deegan is CEO of News Media Canada, which represents Canadian news publishers. He said the AI summaries are acting as a drag on news media outlets\u2019 online engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cZero clicks is zero revenue for the publisher,\u201d Deegan said.<\/p>\n
Alfred Hermida, a professor at the University of British Columbia\u2019s journalism school, said Google used to be a major source of traffic for news outlets.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would search for something on the web, find a link to a news story and think, oh, that sounds interesting, I\u2019ll click and read it. Of course, if you have an AI summary, it\u2019s done that for you,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have most people who are casual news consumers \u2026 that AI summary may be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, a group of independent publishers submitted a complaint to the U.K.\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority saying that AI overviews are causing them significant harm.<\/p>\n
Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, said there is a competition issue at play and there could \u201cpotentially\u201d be a case under Canadian law.<\/p>\n
He noted that Google has been hit with competition cases in the past, including one which saw the company lose an antitrust suit brought forward by the U.S. Department of Justice over its dominance in search.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a single company which is and has been the front door to the internet,\u201d Bester said. \u201cAs we appear to move to this kind of narrowing approach, whether that\u2019s AI summaries or chatbot interactions, it really is in my mind just another iteration of those same concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post last week, Google\u2019s head of search Liz Reid said \u201corganic click volume\u201d from searches to websites has been \u201crelatively stable year-over-year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reid said that pattern contradicts \u201cthird-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic \u2014 often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the roll out of AI features in Search.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said Google cares \u201cpassionately \u2014 perhaps more than any other company \u2014 about the health of the web ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clifton van der Linden, an associate professor and director of the Digital Society Lab at McMaster University, noted many AI summaries are accurate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the reason you\u2019re seeing these rapidly changing dynamics in referral traffic is in part because users do find these AI-generated summaries useful \u2026 but useful does not necessarily equate to credible, authoritative, or correct,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that if users bypass a link to a news site due to an AI-generated summary, that \u201ccompounds an existing problem\u201d in Canadian media, which is dealing with a ban on news links on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n
Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government passed the Online News Act in 2023 to require Meta and Google to compensate news publishers for the use of their content. In response, Meta blocked news content from its platforms in Canada, while Google has started making payments under the legislation.<\/p>\n
The future of that legislation seems uncertain. Prime Minister Mark Carney indicated last week he is open to repealing it.<\/p>\n
Johnson said Canadian media has now experienced a \u201cone-two punch\u201d \u2014 first from Meta pulling news links and now from the emergence of AI search engines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point is, and other publishers have raised this, what\u2019s the point of me producing this work if no one\u2019s going to pay for it, and they might not even see it?\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2025.<\/p>\n
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n
Correction<\/p>\n
The published date of this article has been corrected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 News publishers say the AI-generated summaries that now top many Google search results are cutting into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[76,45,49,48,75,15913,4852,47,66],"class_list":["post-68869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-arts","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-hardware","tag-human-interest","tag-national","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}