Google has confirmed that it is experimenting with artificial intelligence to paraphrase the headlines of news articles and the titles of websites right into its search results, which has attracted significant criticism among publishers and media organizations.

The experiment, which was initially published by The Verge, shows that Google Search has been silently modifying the headlines of the news stories shown in the search results, but this was not done by the authors of the publications themselves.

The test was characterized by Google as ‘small’ and ‘narrow’, and it has not been approved to roll out on a wider scale. The company added that it aims to serve user queries with more appropriate titles and enhance engagement.

The changes have indicated red flags immediately. In one example that really stood out, The Verge had a headline of “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool, and it did not help me cheat on anything”, which Google had shortened to just “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool” – effectively reversing the article’s original intent and making it appear like an endorsement.

The publishers are outraged because they believe that a journalist is actually making intentional editorial choices concerning the manner in which to frame, prioritize, and be accurate when writing the headline. A computer program that rewrites those choices without consent effectively becomes an invisible editor separating the journalist and the reader.

The development arrives at a particularly difficult time, as publishers are already going through a traffic crisis due to Google AI Overviews, which now show up in 30 to 45 % of informational searches, answering queries on the page, not forcing them to have to click through to the source.

Offering some reassurance, a spokesperson of Google explained to The Verge that even in the case of an expansion in the experiment, the company would not provide a generative AI model to generate completely new headlines out of thin air. Nevertheless, the critics are rather doubtful, as the same experiment in Google Discover was turned into the default permanently without any noise.