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Title: Google Decided Against Offering Publishers Options In AI Search

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/19/2054...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: While using website data
to build a Google Search topped with artificial intelligence-generated
answers, an Alphabet executive acknowledged in an internal document that
there was an alternative way to do things: They could ask web publishers for
permission, or let them directly opt out of being included. But giving
publishers a choice would make training AI models in search too complicated,
the company concludes in the document, which was unearthed in the company's
search antitrust trial. It said Google had a "hard red line" and would
require all publishers who wanted their content to show up in the search page
to also be used to feed AI features. Instead of giving options, Google
decided to "silently update," with "no public announcement" about how they
were using publishers' data, according to the document, written by Chetna
Bindra, a product management executive at Google Search. "Do what we say, say
what we do, but carefully." "It's a little bit damning," said Paul Bannister,
the chief strategy officer at Raptive, which represents online creators. "It
pretty clearly shows that they knew there was a range of options and they
pretty much chose the most conservative, most protective of them -- the
option that didn't give publishers any controls at all." For its part, Google
said in a statement to Bloomberg: "Publishers have always controlled how
their content is made available to Google as AI models have been built into
Search for many years, helping surface relevant sites and driving traffic to
them. This document is an early-stage list of options in an evolving space
and doesn't reflect feasibility or actual decisions." They added that Google
continually updates its product documentation for search online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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