Google is letting publishers choose which features are in AI Search, says a statement from a new US news user group: “It’s not for the tensor of Google, it’s for theft”

Publishers do not have the option to keep their content out of Artificial Intelligence Search results because it is evolving into a space for monetisation. That’s according to a newly disclosed internal document, spotted by Bloomberg, which reveals that Google had discussed offering publishers more granular control over how website data would be used in AI Search features instead of the illusion of choice they eventually received.

The trade association backed some of the biggest news publishers in the US, and they slammed the new expanded version of Artificial Intelligence mode, which was traded for traditional search results. The new feature is bad news for publishers of both traffic and revenue, the News/Media Alliance said in a statement.

During Google I/O on Tuesday, the company announced that it’s expanding AI Mode to all users in the US, which appears in a new tab directly within Search. When users enter a question, there is a list of links to which anArtificial Intelligence-generated response can be appended.

Danielle Coffey says that links were the last quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. “Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. This has to be addressed in order to prevent domination of the internet by one company.

Google Search head Liz Reid said during her testimony that allowing publishers to opt out of individual features would add “enormous complexity,” according to Bloomberg. “By saying a publisher could be like, ‘I want to be in this feature but not that feature,’ it doesn’t work,” Reid said. We would have to say that every feature on the page needs a different model.