Google has announced a change in its generative AI search (SGE). Vice President Robby Stein confirmed that external links to publishers' sites will be more visible. This decision comes after criticism from the publishing sector, which argued that AI summarized content without directing traffic to the original sources. The adjustment seeks a balance between the usefulness of the response and attribution.
The Technical Challenge of Attribution in Generative Responses ??
The change involves modifying the user interface and the presentation logic of SGE. Technically, the language model itself is not altered, but rather how its outputs are displayed. Google's teams are working on designing components that highlight source links without overwhelming the response. The challenge is to integrate these references in a contextual and clear way, maintaining a smooth user experience. It is an adjustment in the presentation layer, not in the core of the LLM.
Publishers Breathe a Sigh of Relief... For Now ????/h3>
It seems that the collective outcry from the industry has had an effect. Now, instead of the AI silently digesting others' work, it will put up a little flag pointing out where it came from. It's progress: we go from everything for free and without credits to everything for free, but with a small link. A Pyrrhic victory for the web, which celebrates that a robot cites us as if we were an academic source. The future is to wait for a machine to send us crumbs of traffic.