The 'Context' That Nobody Requested

According to Google, these AI-powered overviews will give users "more context" before they click through to read an article. Because nothing says "context" like having a machine learning model trained on the entire internet's biases and inaccuracies summarize complex geopolitical events in three bullet points. It's like having a particularly confident but misinformed friend whisper the news to you before you can read it yourself.

The Publisher Paradox

Here's the beautiful irony: Google is testing this feature with "select publications" who presumably agreed to have their content summarized by AI before anyone reads it. It's the digital equivalent of a restaurant letting Yelp post AI-generated reviews of meals nobody has eaten yet. "We're excited to help users understand our content without actually consuming it," said no publisher ever, except probably in a press release drafted by ChatGPT.

How It Actually Works (Probably)

While Google hasn't revealed the technical details, we can make some educated guesses based on their track record:

• Step 1: AI reads the article (or at least pretends to)
• Step 2: AI identifies key phrases like "breaking news" and "unprecedented"
• Step 3: AI generates three bullet points that sound authoritative but may contain subtle hallucinations
• Step 4: User reads summary, feels informed, never visits publisher's site
• Step 5: Google collects more data about what summaries people don't click on

The Future of Not Reading Things

This is just the beginning. Soon we'll have AI summaries of AI summaries, creating an infinite regression of content abstraction. Why read a 1,000-word article when you can read a 50-word AI summary? Why read 50 words when you can get a 5-word AI headline? Why read at all when you can just get a dopamine hit from knowing there's something you could be informed about?

The real genius here is how Google has managed to position reducing publisher traffic as a user experience improvement. It's like a movie theater announcing they'll now play the trailer after the film ends "to give viewers more context about what they just watched."