Google Trials AI-Powered Story Summaries in Google Discover: A Revolutionary Approach to News Consumption
Google’s continuous innovation is once again evident with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) features into its Discover service. In a test phase, select users are experiencing AI-generated story summaries that mimic the format of AI Overviews now appearing atop search results.
Within Discover, these AI-generated overviews coexist alongside traditional editorial highlights. The primary test replaces the publication’s logo and name from the top left of the Discover card, instead featuring icons from multiple sources to distinguish them. The term “Trending” is utilized to differentiate these summaries from articles.
These compilations gather information from multiple publications and online resources, followed by three lines of AI-generated text derived from those sources. A “See more” button allows for an additional three lines of text to be displayed. The primary editorial source is then provided as the main link for further exploration.
In a discovery made by 9to5Google, the AI summary utilized a blog post from NASA’s website as its primary source, sourcing both the main image and headline from this resource. By pressing the “More” button within the card, all sources included can be accessed. A disclaimer stating “Generated with AI, which can make mistakes,” appears only after the “See more” option has been selected.
Previously, Google attempted to summarize topics with multiple sources by grouping three articles on the same topic into boxes called “Headlines.” The objective was to provide access to three competing sources, particularly useful for presenting alternative opinions around political content.
The aforementioned test is not Google’s only AI experiment within Discover. AndellDam also discovered a version in testing that provided an AI summary of a single article rather than aggregating multiple sources. To achieve this, Google has moved the publication name to the bottom of the card and made the headline significantly smaller.
These tests have been observed on both Android and iOS versions of Discover, with no indication of the feature coming to desktop, a relatively new addition to Chrome.
Elsewhere in Google Discover, an experiment for a new Save icon has emerged to aid users in keeping track of sources for future reference. A small bookmark icon has appeared between the overflow menu and the heart during these tests, with all saved items accessible within the Activity section.
