Publishers can’t control AI answers. They can’t ignore them either

As Google’s AI summaries become a default layer between publishers and readers, accuracy is no longer just the platform’s problem.

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Pete Pachal is a journalist and the creator of Media Copilot, a newsletter and podcast that examines how AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Google’s AI Overviews are sometimes wrong. This has been a perennial complaint about the Gemini-written summaries that appear at the top of search results since their debut in mid 2024.

It also happens to be true. Optimists might dismiss the infamous “glue on pizza” moment and others like it as simply early bugs in a new feature. But in the spring of 2026, The New York Times commissioned AI startup Oumi to study how frequently AI Overviews give bad answers. The latest........

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