Google AI rewrites news headlines for its Discover feed, breaking its own anti-clickbait rules

Google is testing an AI feature in its "Discover" news feed that automatically rewrites editorial headlines, often turning them into shorter, more provocative, or simply incorrect versions. The result is the kind of engagement-focused headline the company warns against in its own Discover rules, which explicitly reject clickbait.

Some of the changes are striking. At Ars Technica, the headline "Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one" was replaced with the inaccurate "Steam Machine price revealed." A Mindfactory report titled "Radeon RX 9070 XT Outsells The Entire NVIDIA RTX 50 Series On Popular German Retailer" was shortened to "AMD GPU tops Nvidia."

Google told The Verge that the feature is a small test meant to help users grasp articles more quickly. Still, the AI-generated rewrites replace newsroom decisions with Google's own automated framing, raising concerns that the company is using AI to tighten its grip on how news is shaped and delivered on top of the influence it already exercises.