Google Discover Replaces News Headlines With Sometimes Inaccurate AI-Generated Alternatives (theverge.com)
(Sunday January 25, 2026 @11:24PM (EditorDavid)
from the I'm-feeling-lucky dept.)
- Reference: 0180655872
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/26/001230/google-discover-replaces-news-headlines-with-sometimes-inaccurate-ai-generated-alternatives
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/tech/865168/google-says-ai-news-headlines-are-feature-not-experiment
An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from The Verge :
> In early December, I brought you the news that Google has [2]begun replacing Verge headlines , and those of our competitors, with AI clickbait nonsense in its content feed [which appears on the leftmost homescreen page of many Android phones and the Google app's homepage]. Google [3]appeared to be backing away from the experiment, but now tells The Verge that its AI headlines in Google Discover are a feature, one that "performs well for user satisfaction." I once again see lots of misleading claims every time I check my phone...
>
> For example, Google's AI claimed last week that "US reverses foreign drone ban," citing and linking to [4]this PCMag story for the news. That's not just false — PCMag took pains to explain that it's false in the story that Google links to...! What does the author of that PCMag story think? "It makes me feel icky," Jim Fisher tells me over the phone. "I'd encourage people to click on stories and read them, and not trust what Google is spoon-feeding them." He says Google should be using the headline that humans wrote, and if Google needs a summary, it can use the ones that publications already submit to help search engines parse our work.
>
> Google claims it's not rewriting headlines. It characterizes these new offerings as "trending topics," even though each "trending topic" presents itself as one of our stories, links to our stories, and uses our images, all without competent fact-checking to ensure the AI is getting them right... The AI is also no longer restricted to roughly four words per headline, so I no longer see nonsense headlines like "Microsoft developers using AI" or "AI tag debate heats." (Instead, I occasionally see tripe like "Fares: Need AAA & AA Games" or "Dispatch sold millions; few avoided romance.")
>
> But Google's AI has no clue what parts of these stories are new, relevant, significant, or true, and it can easily confuse one story for another. On December 26th, Google told me that "Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge." They hadn't. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that "ASUS ROG Ally X arrives." (It arrived [5]in 2024 ; the new Xbox Ally [6]arrived months ago .) On January 20th, it wrote that "Glasses-free 3D tech wows," introducing readers to "New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia" — but linking to [7]this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor...
>
> Google declined our request for an interview to more fully explain the idea.
The site Android Police [8]spotted more inaccurate headlines in December :
> A [9]story from 9to5Google , which was actually titled 'Don't buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger hoping for faster speeds — just get the 'slower' one instead' was [10]retitled as 'Qi2 slows older Pixels.' Similarly, Ars Technica's 'Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one' was changed to 'Steam Machine price revealed.' At the time, we believed that the inaccuracies were due to the feature being unstable and in early testing.... Now, Google has stopped calling Discover replacing human-written headlines as an "experiment."
"Google buries a 'Generated with AI, which can make mistakes' message under the 'See more' button in the summary," [11]reports 9to5Google , "making it look like this is the publisher's intended headline."
> While it is obvious that Google has refined this feature over the past couple of months, it doesn't take long to still find plenty of misleading headlines throughout Discover... Another [12]article from NotebookCheck about an Anker power bank with a retractable cable was given a headline that's about another product entirely. A pair of headlines from Tom's Hardware and PCMag, meanwhile, show the two sides of using AI for this purpose. The Tom's Hardware headline, "Free GPU & Amazon Scams," isn't representative of [13]the actual article , which is about someone who bought a GPU from Amazon, canceled their order, and the retailer shipped it anyway. There's nothing about "Amazon Scams" in the article.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/865168/google-says-ai-news-headlines-are-feature-not-experiment
[2] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/835839/google-discover-ai-headlines-clickbait-nonsense
[3] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/838354/googles-ai-news-bot-is-still-confused-but-no-longer-replacing-our-headlines
[4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/dji-and-the-us-drone-ban-explained-our-expert-answers-every-question
[5] https://www.theverge.com/24204770/asus-rog-ally-x-review-handheld-gaming-pc
[6] https://www.theverge.com/games/799698/xbox-ally-x-review-asus-microsoft-full-screen-experience
[7] https://www.techradar.com/televisions/i-saw-2-next-gen-3d-tvs-without-glasses-that-use-a-new-tech-that-changes-everything-heres-how-it-works
[8] https://www.androidpolice.com/google-discover-is-crafting-its-own-headlines-with-ai/
[9] https://9to5google.com/2025/11/26/qi2-25w-wireless-chargers/
[10] https://9to5google.com/2026/01/23/google-discover-ai-headlines-feature/
[11] https://9to5google.com/2026/01/23/google-discover-ai-headlines-feature/
[12] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Anker-releases-new-version-of-power-bank-with-retractable-cable.1208273.0.html
[13] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/blessed-redditor-buys-rog-astral-rtx-5080-cancels-order-but-receives-gpu-anyway-amazon-tells-him-to-keep-gpu-and-usd1-850-refund
> In early December, I brought you the news that Google has [2]begun replacing Verge headlines , and those of our competitors, with AI clickbait nonsense in its content feed [which appears on the leftmost homescreen page of many Android phones and the Google app's homepage]. Google [3]appeared to be backing away from the experiment, but now tells The Verge that its AI headlines in Google Discover are a feature, one that "performs well for user satisfaction." I once again see lots of misleading claims every time I check my phone...
>
> For example, Google's AI claimed last week that "US reverses foreign drone ban," citing and linking to [4]this PCMag story for the news. That's not just false — PCMag took pains to explain that it's false in the story that Google links to...! What does the author of that PCMag story think? "It makes me feel icky," Jim Fisher tells me over the phone. "I'd encourage people to click on stories and read them, and not trust what Google is spoon-feeding them." He says Google should be using the headline that humans wrote, and if Google needs a summary, it can use the ones that publications already submit to help search engines parse our work.
>
> Google claims it's not rewriting headlines. It characterizes these new offerings as "trending topics," even though each "trending topic" presents itself as one of our stories, links to our stories, and uses our images, all without competent fact-checking to ensure the AI is getting them right... The AI is also no longer restricted to roughly four words per headline, so I no longer see nonsense headlines like "Microsoft developers using AI" or "AI tag debate heats." (Instead, I occasionally see tripe like "Fares: Need AAA & AA Games" or "Dispatch sold millions; few avoided romance.")
>
> But Google's AI has no clue what parts of these stories are new, relevant, significant, or true, and it can easily confuse one story for another. On December 26th, Google told me that "Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge." They hadn't. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that "ASUS ROG Ally X arrives." (It arrived [5]in 2024 ; the new Xbox Ally [6]arrived months ago .) On January 20th, it wrote that "Glasses-free 3D tech wows," introducing readers to "New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia" — but linking to [7]this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor...
>
> Google declined our request for an interview to more fully explain the idea.
The site Android Police [8]spotted more inaccurate headlines in December :
> A [9]story from 9to5Google , which was actually titled 'Don't buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger hoping for faster speeds — just get the 'slower' one instead' was [10]retitled as 'Qi2 slows older Pixels.' Similarly, Ars Technica's 'Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one' was changed to 'Steam Machine price revealed.' At the time, we believed that the inaccuracies were due to the feature being unstable and in early testing.... Now, Google has stopped calling Discover replacing human-written headlines as an "experiment."
"Google buries a 'Generated with AI, which can make mistakes' message under the 'See more' button in the summary," [11]reports 9to5Google , "making it look like this is the publisher's intended headline."
> While it is obvious that Google has refined this feature over the past couple of months, it doesn't take long to still find plenty of misleading headlines throughout Discover... Another [12]article from NotebookCheck about an Anker power bank with a retractable cable was given a headline that's about another product entirely. A pair of headlines from Tom's Hardware and PCMag, meanwhile, show the two sides of using AI for this purpose. The Tom's Hardware headline, "Free GPU & Amazon Scams," isn't representative of [13]the actual article , which is about someone who bought a GPU from Amazon, canceled their order, and the retailer shipped it anyway. There's nothing about "Amazon Scams" in the article.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/865168/google-says-ai-news-headlines-are-feature-not-experiment
[2] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/835839/google-discover-ai-headlines-clickbait-nonsense
[3] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/838354/googles-ai-news-bot-is-still-confused-but-no-longer-replacing-our-headlines
[4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/dji-and-the-us-drone-ban-explained-our-expert-answers-every-question
[5] https://www.theverge.com/24204770/asus-rog-ally-x-review-handheld-gaming-pc
[6] https://www.theverge.com/games/799698/xbox-ally-x-review-asus-microsoft-full-screen-experience
[7] https://www.techradar.com/televisions/i-saw-2-next-gen-3d-tvs-without-glasses-that-use-a-new-tech-that-changes-everything-heres-how-it-works
[8] https://www.androidpolice.com/google-discover-is-crafting-its-own-headlines-with-ai/
[9] https://9to5google.com/2025/11/26/qi2-25w-wireless-chargers/
[10] https://9to5google.com/2026/01/23/google-discover-ai-headlines-feature/
[11] https://9to5google.com/2026/01/23/google-discover-ai-headlines-feature/
[12] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Anker-releases-new-version-of-power-bank-with-retractable-cable.1208273.0.html
[13] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/blessed-redditor-buys-rog-astral-rtx-5080-cancels-order-but-receives-gpu-anyway-amazon-tells-him-to-keep-gpu-and-usd1-850-refund
in the age of disinfomation (Score:1)
by Black Parrot ( 19622 )
AI is the solution to every problem.
Why though (Score:3)
What do they gain from misleading headlines? Users who click and find things unrelated to the clickbait will start clicking less. Good chance they'll stop using the service. So with fewer users and annoyed companies what is the gain here? Just another attempt to find a solution for the LLM?
Re: (Score:2)
They paid all that money for it and by-golly they're going to use it.
Yet we still see ads paying for clickbait (Score:4, Insightful)
> What do they gain from misleading headlines? Users who click and find things unrelated to the clickbait will start clicking less. Good chance they'll stop using the service. So with fewer users and annoyed companies what is the gain here? Just another attempt to find a solution for the LLM?
You'd think so, but the dominance of clickbait ads and clickbait stories (coverage of Apple is a good example, there's not a lot of really deep analysis of Apple compared to each week's "Apple is Doomed" narrative) shows the companies who pay for that ad space are happy with being associated with that shit. Now arguably that's because companies have so little actual control of where Google AdSense, et.al. places their ads, but someone has convinced CEOs that on-line advertising is essential and a good investment, now matter how obnoxious it is.
(And in evidence, I offer those "Mongo DB" ads that keep on popping up here. Now I'm not their target audience, but I can assure you that my impression of Mongo DB as a product and particularly as a company is very negative, based on their on-line advertising.)
Re: Yet we still see ads paying for clickbait (Score:2)
That's a very valid point I hadn't thought of. Thank you!
Re: (Score:2)
That's ok, I don't have a good impression of them either, for unrelated reasons.
But note that you've just propagated the phrase "Mongo DB" yourself, there are going to be several readers here who have never heard of them and will search them out. Some of these readers will become new customers.
Generally, saying that you don't like a particular $THING will get contrarians to seek out $THING. The number of contrarians is fairly small. If you say that in a restricted private space, chances are you will conv
Re: (Score:2)
"Mongo just pawn in game of life."
Re: (Score:2)
> What do they gain from misleading headlines? Users who click and find things unrelated to the clickbait will start clicking less.
Will they? Will they actually start clicking less? Users who clicked the bait, have already been baited. Who says AI can't keep them on the line better than the average meatsack marketeer?
Long term AI certainly will. It's not hard to train AI to predict human behavior. We humans turned our own clickbait into a multi-trillion dollar global industry. Because we're that predictable. AI will learn how to do that subconsciously every time.
Re: (Score:2)
Executive A mandated that everyone incorporate one new AI function into their product every week or they get fired.
Re: (Score:2)
What do they gain? Power --> money --> power. If no news headlines exist except GOOGs, then GOOGLE gets to define truth. So first --- Google needs to write news headlines; their tool-of-choice for this toxic perversion is *.ai. If readers accept these (new) text strings then GOOGLE can continue to the next step -- of eliminating ANY OTHER source of headlines. Use of a universal AI ( GOOG + data-pals ) will boil down to ... the GOOGs headlines. Success. Profit Power!