Google Is Testing AI-Generated 'Micro Headlines' in Discover, and the Results Are Messy

Google is testing AI-generated micro-headlines in Discover that replace publishers' original headlines. Unsurprisingly (given Google's messy experience with AI-generated Search summaries last year), the results range from misleading to nonsensical. The experiment involves replacing the headlines that writers and editors actually crafted with ultra-short, AI-generated titles, each four words long.

For example, Google's AI rewrote an Ars Technica story about Valve's Steam Machine as "Steam Machine price revealed," but Valve hasn't disclosed a price yet. In another example, it turned a PC Gamer article into "Schedule 1 farming backup," which doesn't make any sense at all without context. A 9to5Google piece's title got rewritten to "Qi2 slows older Pixels," though the original simply warned readers not to expect faster speeds, The Verge reports.

Google spokesperson Mallory Deleon described this as "a small UI experiment for a subset of Discover users," claiming the company is ...