Although Google touted the feature’s success in an earnings call this week, its rollout was met with criticism from publishers and creators concerned that AI Overviews sap traffic and advertising revenue away from their sites.
Another prominent AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, can produce results that are nearly identical to text from the news articles it uses as sources. Multiple publishers have sent Perplexity legal threats and demanded the search engine cease using their content in results.