Google won’t stop replacing our news headlines with awesome artificial intelligence

In early December, I brought you the news Which Google is starting to replace edge Headlines, and those of our competitors, with AI Clickbait nonsense in their content feed. Google He seems to be retreating from the experiencebut he tells now Edge Its AI titles in Google Discover are a feature that “does well for user satisfaction.” I again see a lot of misleading claims every time I check my phone.

As I explained last month, these AI titles are like a bookstore that replaces the covers of the books it displays — only here, “Library” is the news tab that appears when you swipe right on the home screen of a Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel, and the “cover” may be an AI-generated lie rather than the truth.

For example, Google’s AI claimed this last week “The United States lifts the ban on foreign drones” Citing and linking this PCMag story For news. This is not just a mistake – PCMag He made an effort to explain that he was lying In the story that Google is linked to!

from PCMagTheir bold story:

I saw a headline saying the drone ban has been dropped. Is this correct? No. While this is true the Department of Commerce She finished her efforts To restrict the import of DJI and other drones in January 2026, it did so only because they would be redundant in the wake of the FCC’s actions. The Commerce Department is a separate entity from the FCC, and the proposed restrictions were not put in place from the beginning. Some reports about the Commerce Department’s decision contain misleading headlines that might make you think the government has changed its face, so I don’t blame you for being confused.

What does the author do? PCMag The story you think? “It makes me nauseous,” Jim Fisher told me over the phone. “I would encourage people to click on the stories and read them, and not trust what Google gives them.”

He says Google should use headlines written by humans, and if Google needs a summary, it can use headlines that posts already submit to help search engines analyze our work.

Google claims that it does not rewrite headlines. It describes 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 efficiently checking the facts to make sure the AI ​​gets it right.

In some ways, Google’s current implementation isn’t quite as bad as it was a month ago. I’ve seen fewer examples of egregious clickbait, partly because Google Discover now presents me with a fair number of unadulterated news stories alongside AI stories — though it cuts through their headlines too quickly, making many of them difficult to read.

AI is no longer limited to roughly four words per headline, so I no longer see meaningless headlines like “Microsoft developers use AI” or “AI label debate heats up.” (Alternatively, sometimes I see tripe like “Pricing: AAA and AA games required“or”Dispatch has sold millions. Few avoided romance“.”)

But Google’s AI has no idea which parts of these stories are new, relevant, important, or true, and can easily confuse one story with another.

On December 26th, Google told me that “Steam device price and HDMI details appear“. They did not. On January 11, Google announced that “ASUS ROG Ally X arrives“. (receipt In 2024; New Xbox ally Arrived months ago.) On January 20, he wrote that “Eye-catching glasses-free 3D technology“, introducing readers to “a new 3D technology called Immensity from Leia” – but with a link to this Tech Radar story About a completely different company called Visual Semiconductor. I found another that claims to be related to the GPU maker’s comment On lack of RAM; It has been linked instead to A Digitims story About RAM Maker.

I get especially frustrated when I see bait-and-switch headlines edge Stories, of course, and the worry that they take away our ability to market our work.

Google has summarized my colleague Jay Peters’ story on how OLED displays with an RGB strip can do this Open clearer text and more accurate colors “to boring”New OLED gaming monitors debut“.My story about letting you Experience an immersive 3D demo of the Lego Smart Brick as if you were with us at CES became “Lego Smart Play will launch on March 1“, a date that wasn’t news by the time Google wrote it! And Google AI decided to advertise our location Big Verge Awards at CES 2026 The story is called “Robotics and artificial intelligence at CES“, which was basically the opposite of our conclusion in that story.

However, our new AI overlords are not effectively getting rid of the worst Humans Clickbait in exchange for our loyalty. One headline that Google’s AI hasn’t replaced is “Star Wars Outlaws free download has been available for less than 24 hours“By Screen screaming. Here’s what the author of this story reveals midway through the post:

A single code being given away when potentially thousands of people are participating seems a bit stingy, though at the time of writing Ubisoft’s post it hasn’t quite blown up, so you might have a chance.

Yes, Ubisoft gave it away One copy of the game On Screen screamingFOMO Clickbait for FOMO was good for the service with no adjustments at all.

Here’s Google spokesperson Jennifer Kutz’s statement about the Google feature:

We launched new feature Last year in Discover to help people explore topics covered by many content creators and websites. The feature includes a helpful AI-powered overview of the topic, a featured image, and links to related stories. The overview title reflects information across a range of sites, and is not a rewrite of an individual article title. This feature is working well for user satisfaction, and we’re continuing to experiment with the UI to help people click through and explore content on the web.

Google declined our request for an interview to fully explain the idea.

I don’t know how widely Google is offering these “trending topics” AI headlines yet, but the company appears to be testing them outside of the Google Discover news feed as well. Recently I’ve seen some of them pop up as push notifications on my phone; Clicking on it takes me to a Google Gemini chatbot that tries to summarize the latest news.

Google changes like this are the biggest reason Edge He now has a subscriptionWithout which we would not live Google zero.

Disclosure: Fox Media, EdgeThe parent company has File a lawsuit against Googleto obtain damages from its illegal monopoly on ad technology.