Google’s forays into exposing users to dubious generative AI features have an incredibly poor track record. From error-ridden AI Overviews to AI slop dominating Google’s image search results, users have had to put up with a lot of needless and often easily avoidable nonsense.
Now, Google Discover, the firm’s personalized content feed that’s heavily featured on Android phones, is showing users misleading and seemingly AI-generated headlines that replace the actual ones on articles, as The Verge reports.
It’s yet another annoying feature that not only will lead to plenty of confusion, but it also directly undermines the agency of online publications, highlighting a deteriorating relationship between Google and the news media.
“BG3 players exploit children,” reads one headline, referring to the popular role-playing video game “Baldur’s Gate 3.” The actual piece by PC Gamer is about how players have discovered how to clone virtual children inside the popular game to break it — and isn’t an instance of actual child labor, as the dumbed-down headline suggests.
A separate four-word headline The Verge spotted claimed “Steam Machine price revealed” — even though game company Valve has yet to announce the price of its upcoming console. The original headline by Ars Technica reads: “Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to be priced like one.”
Google acknowledges in a small notice below a short description of the content on Discover that some elements of its links are “generated with AI, which can make mistakes.”
But that leaves the question of why the company chose to add bungled headlines to its Discover feature in the first place. What are its misleading, four-word headlines doing better than the often carefully crafted ones written by human editors? Is it simply a matter of saving screen real estate?
A Google spokesperson clarified to The Verge that “these screenshots show a small UI experiment for a subset of Discover users.”
“We are testing a new design that changes the placement of existing headlines to make topic details easier to digest before they explore links from across the web,” the spokesperson said.
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