"Google’s rollout of tools like AI Overviews and AI Mode—chatbots that answer users’ search queries—has begun shifting online behavior from browsing links to reading AI-generated responses, drastically reducing traffic to news sites. The resulting drop in organic traffic is forcing many media organizations to rethink their sustainability models in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by tech platforms.
The adoption of generative artificial intelligence tools such as AI Overviews—which summarizes search results at the top of the page for users who have enabled the feature in Search Labs—and AI Mode—a chatbot that interacts conversationally with users, currently only available in English and in the U.S.—is already changing how people access information online. This new paradigm, centered on automatic AI-generated responses that often eliminate the need to click through to other websites, is still in an experimental phase but is already causing a steep decline in traffic to news outlets—worsening the digital media industry’s ongoing sustainability crisis."
