Google is testing AI-powered article summaries on the Google News pages of select publications | TechCrunch

Google is testing AI-powered article summaries on the Google News pages of participating publications as part of a new pilot program, the search giant announced Wednesday.

News publishers participating in the pilot program include Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner and The Washington Post.

The goal of the new commercial partnership program is to “explore how AI can drive a more engaged audience,” Google said in a blog post. As part of the new AI pilot program, the company will work with publishers to experiment with new features in Google News.

By adding AI-powered article summaries, Google says users will get more context before clicking through to read an article. While AI-generated summaries may lead to fewer clicks on news articles, publications participating in the commercial pilot program will receive direct payments from Google, which could offset the potential decrease in traffic to their sites.

The AI-powered article summaries only appear on the Google News pages of participating publications, and nowhere else on Google News or in Search.

This isn’t the first time Google has introduced AI summaries for news. In July, the company introduced AI summaries in Discover, the main news feed in Google’s search app. With this change, users will no longer see a single headline from a major publication in the feed. Instead, they’ll see the logos of multiple news publishers in the top left corner, followed by an AI-generated summary citing those sources

Google is also experimenting with audio briefings for people who prefer listening to the news rather than reading it, as part of the new pilot program.

The company says these features will include clear attribution and linking to articles.

In addition, Google is working with organizations such as Estadão, Antara, Yonhap and The Associated Press to record real-time information and improve results in the Gemini app.

“As the way people consume information evolves, we will continue to improve our products for people around the world and get feedback from stakeholders across the ecosystem,” Google wrote in its blog post. “We do this work in collaboration with websites and creators of all sizes, from major news publishers to new and emerging voices.”

As part of Google’s announcement on Wednesday, the company said it will launch the Preferred Sources feature globally, after first launching it in the US and India in August. This feature allows users to select their favorite news sites and blogs to appear in the Top Stories section of Google search results.

In the coming days, the feature will be available to English-speaking users around the world, and Google plans to roll it out to all supported languages ​​early next year.

Google will now also highlight links from your news subscriptions and show these links in a special carousel in the Gemini app in the coming weeks, followed by AI overviews and AI mode.

While these features make it easy for users to access news from their favorite sources, they also risk confining them to an ideological bubble that limits their exposure to diverse perspectives.

Google also announced that it is increasing the number of inline links in AI mode. In addition, it introduces “contextual introductions” for embedded links, which are short explanations that explain why a link might be useful to explore.