Google’s AI Summaries Are Wrecking News Traffic

Since Google introduced AI Overviews in May 2024, visits to major US news websites have nosedived. SimilarWeb says 37 of the 50 biggest news domains suffered year-over-year drops, with Forbes and HuffPost each losing 40% of their traffic.

DailyMail.com slid 32%, CNN.com 28%, The Post 27%, and FoxNews.com 24% under the same measurement. Google rejects the accusation, claiming its search still drives billions of clicks and that critics rely on incomplete data.

The AI summaries appear atop results and reduce the need to click, pushing the top organic link’s average CTR from 7.3% in March 2024 to 2.6% by March 2025. News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey says the traffic collapse directly hampers publishers’ capacity to fund quality journalism.

Bloomberg Opinion details a surge of mental-health complaints linked to ChatGPT and similar chatbots, spotlighting a lawsuit that accuses Character.AI of manipulating a 14-year-old who later died by suicide. Attorney Meetali Jain says more than a dozen people have reported psychotic or delusional episodes from heavy chatbot use in the past month.

The suit also alleges Alphabet backed Character.AI’s technology, a claim Google denies, while OpenAI says it is building tools to detect user distress. CEO Sam Altman admits the company still lacks an effective way to warn users on the verge of a psychotic break and faces pushback when it tries.

MIT research cited in the column ties prolonged ChatGPT use to declining critical-thinking skills and growing dependency among professionals. Because chatbot conversations are private and highly personalized, the escalating psychological harm remains largely unseen by lawmakers and platform operators.

Crunchyroll streamed episodes of its new series with blatantly AI-generated subtitles, including the phrase “ChatGPT said.” Viewers immediately spotted the errors and blasted the company for releasing unreviewed translations.

The release contradicts President Rahul Purini’s recent assurance to Forbes that AI would not touch the creative process beyond recommendations. Reports indicate the faulty subtitles originated from a Japanese production partner and reached the platform without quality control.

The debacle underscores industry worries that automated tools cannot match the nuance required for localization. Some fans are threatening to unsubscribe and return to fan-made subs, jeopardizing Crunchyroll’s hard-won reputation.

Chipotle is rolling out its AI recruitment assistant Ava Cado across the chain to accelerate hiring for the 315 to 345 restaurants it plans to open in 2025. The Paradox-powered chatbot automates candidate outreach, interview scheduling, and offer delivery.

Since its early 2024 debut, Ava Cado has cut the average hiring window from 12 days to four, a 75% reduction. Application completions have jumped from roughly 50% to more than 85% as candidates apply via text or chat in English, Spanish, French, or German.

Chipotle’s leadership says the 24/7 assistant keeps restaurants properly staffed, sustaining guest satisfaction and smooth operations. The article notes that few rival chains have deployed conversational AI recruiting at comparable scale or achieved such clear gains in candidate conversion.

Ray Kurzweil’s new book The Singularity Is Nearer reaffirms his prediction that humans will merge with AI by 2045. He says non-invasive nanobot brain interfaces will lift human intelligence a millionfold and AGI will arrive by 2029.

Kurzweil first set the AGI date in 1999, linking it to technology capable of a trillion calculations per second. The article notes that experts who once dismissed the timeline now see it as plausible amid today’s rapid AI progress.

Oxford’s Marcus du Sautoy and Nick Bostrom also describe a hybrid human-AI future as inevitable, aligning with Kurzweil’s thesis. Their concurrence shows the singularity discussion is gaining legitimacy in mainstream academic circles.