Nearly every major company is incorporating AI technology into their products. Yahoo, which had a near monopoly on the internet in the early 2000s, is still going strong. The company recently overhauled its Yahoo News app, introducing powerful AI tools, some of which, unfortunately, Google has criticized.
Although the name Yahoo is not as commonly used as it once was, the company is a major news brand. In fact, its news sites have over 185 million visitors per month. The company has its own app that curates a downloadable news feed. Recently, the company announced a complete overhaul of Yahoo News, which includes several new AI features.
Yahoo! revamps its news app
Before we take a closer look at the app, let’s take a little history. Last year, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger developed an app called Artifact, a news app that used artificial intelligence to curate a news feed for users. It was an interesting idea, but ultimately flopped. Shortly after its release, the company had to shut down the app due to lack of growth. So Yahoo dug up the remains of Artifact and implemented the technology in their Yahoo News app.
So, the Yahoo News app will use the AI technology that the Artifact app used. This will allow it to intelligently curate news articles for users. The articles will be created based on the user’s specific preferences. This is great, because people don’t want to see news articles that don’t interest them. If you’re interested in the latest discoveries in quantum physics, you probably don’t want to see an article about which teams will make the playoffs.
That’s great, but Yahoo is following in Google’s footsteps.
AI technology is a controversial topic, but one of the most notable negative aspects is its potential to disrupt industries. It is already impacting the arts industry, causing artists to lose their jobs.
AI is poised to revolutionize the news industry, and the catalyst is AI Overviews, a technology that provides users with AI-generated summaries of their web searches, so instead of visiting relevant websites and contributing to advertising revenue, you can bypass this process and get the information instantly.
Obviously, this tactic could cost thousands of people their jobs. News sites, as we all know, exist on advertising revenue, so for search engines to take traffic away from news sites and force AI technology on people is offensive to the industry.
What does this have to do with Yahoo?
In addition to adding AI-curated news articles, the revamped Yahoo app also offers AI-generated summaries of news topics. It doesn’t take a genius to see why this is weird. The Yahoo News app is an app that gives you access to the latest news articles. It’s a portal to access news sites. It’s such a big news brand that it’s a staple for several news websites. However, it’s pulling the same stunt that Google did with its AI summaries: it now lets users quickly skip through related news sites.
To make matters worse, the purpose of this app is to go to news sites. Showing an AI-generated summary defeats the purpose of the app itself. It’s a little easier for Google to understand (just a little) because you go to Google for a broader set of knowledge: news sites, video sites, blogs, etc. So showing summaries isn’t that offensive to news organizations, since there’s always the chance that you’re not looking for news. But it doesn’t do Google any favors.
In the case of the Yahoo News app, it is built to display news articles, and users are more likely to visit the app to navigate to news sites, so this AI tool will have a big impact on news sites that curate news.
This shows a bad trend
The fact that Yahoo is introducing this tool suggests something worrying. Google came under fire for introducing AI-powered article summarization. So what will Meta do so soon after? The same thing. It’s a sign that the company is still going ahead with its plans despite public outcry.
Well, same with Yahoo. Now we have another company taking viewers away from news sites without considering what the majority of people are saying. This is like OpenAI trying to bring AI video generation to Hollywood, even though it’s obvious to everyone that it’s going to hurt the industry. I’m talking about the big Hollywood studios like Disney and Warner Bros., even though everyone is worried about this.
The fact that Yahoo, a company with such huge influence in the news industry, has chosen to deploy a tool that could have devastating effects on the news industry, shows that this could become a larger trend. We have seen AI summarization in Google Search, Meta AI, and the default search engine in the Brave browser. Companies are interested in speeding up knowledge acquisition, to make people think that taking a minute to read a post is too long.
The more people who adopt and support their product, the happier the almighty investors will be. After all, it’s all about the money. Yahoo has revamped their news app, which is always a good thing, but we’ll have to wait and see if the AI summaries are embraced.
