On the interface site the policy brief by Lena-Maria Böswald, Roa Powell and Tyreese Calnan, ‘From Crisis to Renewal. Addressing AI’s Impact on Our Information Ecosystem‘, was published.

From the abstract:

AI-driven search-summary features, with Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) being the most promiment example, are rapidly transforming how people access news, with profound implications for our information ecosystem. While AI holds potential to improve access to information, its current deployment risks undermining the sustainability, diversity, and reliability of news.

As AI summaries summarise information directly within search results, they can significantly reduce traffic to news publishers. Evidence suggests users are less likely to click through to original sources when AIOs are present on Google, threatening the financial viability of journalism. These impacts from AI summaries and AIOs in particular are unlikely to be evenly distributed and will play out in different ways across the news sector across Europe, with smaller and ad-funded outlets particularly vulnerable, raising concerns about declining media plurality.