If you thought the clickbait coming out of human-written websites was in poor taste before, wait until you see just how badly Google has bludgeoned those headlines over on Google Discover. As part of its latest experiment, Google Discover is rewriting headlines, meant to make them more appealing. Except it’s doing the opposite.
That’s because Google’s left AI in the driver’s seat. First, it allowed the tech to summarise articles, ultimately diverting traffic away from the source. Now, it’s giving it the power to rewrite those outlets’ headlines and, in some cases, history. The results thus far have been utterly laughable at best, and entirely wrong at worst.
Steam Machine price revealed!
For example, this article’s headline from PC Gamer reads: ‘Child labor is unbeatable’: Baldur’s Gate 3 players discover how to build an army of unkillable kids through the power of polymorph and German media laws,” suddenly became “BG3 players exploit children,” losing any semblance of charm, however hazy.
Another, this time from Ars Technica, mentions Valve’s new Steam Machine, but not the actual cost. “Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to be priced like one,” it currently reads. But according to Discover, users might see “Steam Machine price revealed,” and be downright disappointed.
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Fortunately, according to The Verge, the change is still in the pilot phase, so these results may deter Google from moving forward with it. We highly doubt it, but it’s a possibility. Our Discover feed, which had to be turned back on for the sake of experimentation, still curates a list of somewhat interesting articles, original headlines intact.
“These screenshots show a small UI experiment for a subset of Discover users,” Google spokesperson Mallory Deleon told The Verge. “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.”
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What are the possible outcomes of letting AI rewrite headlines, according to the text?