Feed Me the Highlights: Google’s AI Now Sums It Up So You Don’t Have To

Key Highlights

 

Google has launched AI-generated summaries across its Discover feed for all US consumers, a radical revamp of the way it showcases news and trending stories within its flagship app. The nationwide rollout replaces traditional single-publisher headlines with short AI-written summaries that consolidate information from multiple news sources, each identified with mini logos stacked in the corner of the card.

 

How the New Discover AI Summaries Work

 

Users browsing the Discover feed now notice condensed summary cards, particularly for popular lifestyle trends like entertainment and sports. The cards include publisher logos in the top left corner, indicating that content is compiled from more than a single source.

 

Hitting "see more" expands the card, and users can view all of the source articles and a more extensive AI-generated summary.

 

Every summary is accompanied by a bold warning label: "Generated with AI, which can make mistakes," recognizing potential accuracy problems.

 

Google has added a new bookmark icon, which allows users to directly save articles to their Activity tab for future reading—a step that simplifies content retrieval without laborious trawls through browsing history.

 

Implications for Publishers and Readers

 

Google describes the goal as allowing users to choose at a glance which pages to visit faster by giving them more context. But initial third-party estimates and publisher reactions indicate mounting worry: up to 64 percent of search results featuring AI summaries now end without a user clicking through to the original source, contributing to publisher traffic losses.

 

The AI-powered campaign is most commonly used on stories that are labeled as "Trending," with traditional article formats still available for other content, with ongoing testing for additional content presentation options. News outlets are speaking out against these AI features, pointing to declining search and referral traffic since the wider implementation of AI Overviews and similar tools.

 

User Experience and the Future

 

Discover users enjoy quicker previews and more effective news reading, with options to save and return to articles.

 

Google's move underscores its prioritization of AI-powered curation in keeping users engaged—and away from emerging competitors like ChatGPT—even as the role and reach of publishers evolve in a changing digital landscape.

 

Sources: Engadget, Perplexity, The Verge