Google AI Mode and the death of news as we know it, as algorithms take over

How do you get your news? It’s a question I ask everyone when I meet them - and yes, I’m a lot of fun at social events.

But really. How do you get your news?

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How do you find out what’s happening in the world? How do you know what John Swinney and Donald Trump discussed? How do you find out about waiting times in the NHS? Teacher strikes?

How do you know?

Twitter? (I won’t call it X and you can’t make me). Facebook? Google updates? Pushes on your phone? Do you still sit and watch the 6 o’clock news on the BBC?

It may sound like a small question, but I promise you, it’s one of vital importance.

And it’s one that has an untold impact on the world around you, because perhaps another way to ask this question is: who controls the flow of your news?

Who curates what you see and how you see it?

Is it a media outlet? A team of journalists using their training and decades of experience to navigate and filter, to understand context and importance ?

Or is it a big tech company? Increasingly operated by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, curating your news to what you want to see and hear? News to suit you, as it were.

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Google’s new AI Mode

If you didn’t know, Google has been using something called an AI Overview for some time now.

If you Google something - what time are Rangers playing tonight - a helpful paragraph will magically appear at the top of your search results telling you exactly what you want to know.

AI would have gained this knowledge by scraping articles across the breadth of the internet to find the answer to then helpfully hand to you, hassle free.

When it was first introduced, it had some accuracy problems. But AI learns, that’s what it does. And now, AI Mode has arrived in the UK, smoothly fitting into your life with no fuss or fanfare.

And it’s set to decimate the news industry.

Billed as being far more accurate than Overview could ever hope to be in its electric sheep dreams, and having a greater reach, scraping news and analysis from websites indiscriminately to paraphrase everything you need to know in one convenient bundle of sentences magically appearing at the top of your search results.

So far, so convenient. Why would you need to look further? It’s quick, efficient and you’re busy and have places to be and things to do.

BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images

But what’s the problem?

The problem is - and I don’t mean to sound too much like Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, in Jurassic Park, but really, is he ever wrong? - is that no effort has been put in by the AI to acquire this knowledge. And so no responsibility need be taken.

Inside the computer is not a bustling group of tiny journalists, pulling their tiny hair out as they desperately wait for a comment from Police Scotland, or the Scottish Government. It’s acquired, as said above, by reading and collecting the work done by others, to curate the answer you so desperately crave.

When you Google something, it is Google that decides what articles are put in front of you, what articles AI uses to take its information.

Complete control over the news, not just over one site, or one newspaper. But a total and complete monopoly on information.

It rewards sites and articles that conform to its conditions, and punishes others by hiding them deep at the bottom of the internet, leaving publishers uncertain whether to cave in and characterise their news in a way Google likes, or not, and leave the article as the preverbal tree falling in the wood.

Google says these conditions are in place to - ironically - wheedle out spam and AI ensures it’s proper, human created, factual news. But can we be sure?

Incidentally, they don’t pay the sites they take this information off, as they say the articles used are top of the results under the AI answer, so people can click through. But they don’t.

I mean, do you?

So far, so terrifying.

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Who is responsible?

The news is all bias any way through, right? Fake news left, right and centre and the mainstream media are just annoyed they can’t brainwash readers.

And you know what, perhaps surprisingly, I get it. The news media is far from perfect, and it has always been far from perfect.

In more recent years, the internet and social media has fundamentally altered how journalism works. Deciding on how to cover the news is messy and complicated, and we don’t always get it right, and we won’t in the future either.

But what we are, crucially - and this is the point - is regulated. If we make a mistake, we are legally culpable. Say it louder for people at the back.

Can Google really say the same? If its AI Overview, or AI Mode, makes a mistake, peddles inaccurate information, who will stop them? Are they bound by Scottish contempt of court rules? Or can they ignore those too?

Will they publish the names of victims of crime? Or name hotels where vulnerable asylum seekers have been moved to? Making decisions that would put a real life human editor in scorching hot water, or even, up in front of a judge.

How do we hold AI accountable?

Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

What can you do?

AI is fundamentally changing the way you view the world.

All these algorithms that are data gathering everything you touch online is then offering you a very curated view of society, culture and humanity. And its too late - it’s already happened.

But, you can do something - you can pay for your news. This isn’t an advert, it doesn’t have to be us. It can be anyone, anywhere you get your news - pay them.

Your local paper, your favourite national paper. Hell, your favourite paper from anywhere in the world.

Pay your licencing fee if it’s the BBC. Go straight to the website or app of the news organisation you read. Don’t allow an algorithm to choose for you.

The news isn’t perfect, but its decisions will always need to be made with human judgement and, more importantly, under strict regulation.

Otherwise we descend merrily to chaos, and be careful, because we’re already half way there.

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