‘This is going to be a pressing policy issue’: Google AI Mode is changing the internet as we know it
Rudyard Griffiths and Sean Speer discuss Google’s newly launched AI Mode in Canada, exploring its potentially profound impact on news organizations and content creators given that users increasingly rely on AI-generated summaries rather than clicking through to original sources. The discussion extends to broader policy implications, including recent comments from Donald Trump about punitive tariffs against countries that regulate American big tech, and the implications for Canadian digital policy.
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Program Transcript
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RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: AI mode. It’s here. Google has rolled out in Canada the last few days a revolutionary approach to search, combining powerful artificial intelligence with your Google Chrome browser that serves up over 90% of all search results in Canada. To explain the implications of all this, from news to consumers to Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, I’ve got Sean Spear, my co-founder and editor-at-large of The Hub on the line. Hey, Sean.
SEAN SPEER: Rudyard, Always great to connect.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Tell us a little bit, Sean, off the top, about why we’ve been writing and talking about AI Mode here at The Hub the last month or more. And now, Sean, it’s finally here. AI Mode has arrived in Canada. This is going to be consequential, isn’t it?
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, I mean, we’re living through something really exciting if we step back and think about it. We have a number of mostly American based companies competing to secure market dominance in the world of AI and LLM platforms. OpenAI and ChatGPT had an early lead in part because it was out ahead of others and now the numbers of people who are using different GPTs on a daily basis is rather extraordinary. But what makes Google’s entrance into this AI race so interesting is something that you mentioned, which is its pre-existing market dominance in the world of search. And so Google seems to be making a bet that when you combine that pre existing dominance with some new and exciting uses of AI, it can close the gap with ChatGPT and some of the other players in this market and come to be effectively the new default or gold standard when it comes to how people are using AI as an interface between themselves and, and the rich content of the Internet.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Well Sean, let’s have a little fun and demo now in real time for our watching audience on YouTube AI mode. Again, this available here in Canada. For those of you listening on our podcast feed, I’ll kind of walk you through what we’re showing folks on the screen. So you land on something here that looks very much like a regular kind of prompt window that you’d see in ChatGPT or perplexity and you get to ask it anything. So and again, this is all inside the Google Chrome browser. So I’m going to ask it, for example, how much better are the Conservatives doing in the polls than the Liberals? Oh, I spelled that wrong before. I didn’t slip. Liberals in Canada these days. Question mark, Boom. It’s searching. Look at that. 80, 90 sites and bam.
What it produces, I’ll scroll down here and show our audience, is something very much like an Axios story. If you’re familiar with the U.S. News outlet, it gives you all the latest poll results here at the top from different polling companies. It gives you some analysis of those results and it gives you a kind of summation. So effectively it’s read these 70 odd sites and sources and synthesized that information for you. And then here you can see in this column, the right hand column, a whole bunch of sources that it drew from. So you can click through to these stories. Now Sean, what’s interesting to throw this back to you is that people understandably are not clicking through because look how great that summary is. I got all the information, it’s condensed, it’s synthesized from all these websites. It’s basically taken off my plate a ton of work that I would have normally had to go through reading those multiple sites. So some reports, including by the Pew Charitable foundation in the United States are indicating that less than 1% of users are, are clicking through Two original sources, when they’re presented with a summary that’s related to a kind of news and information type inquiry like the one I just did. What’s your reaction?
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, one way I’ve come to think about this is that Google saw that OpenAI and some of the other AI companies that route ahead of it were starting to erode Google’s market share when it comes to search. Because, as you say, Google has become so synonymous with online search that to Google has become a verb. It’s like the equivalent of Kleenex or Band Aid or whatever. And for the first time, it wasn’t Yahoo or some of the other search options. It was the AIs that were actually represented the biggest threat to Google’s market dominance. And so, in a way, by launching now AI Mode, it’s almost like Google’s decided that it’s going to cannibalize its own search business, because it accepts that someone is going to do it and it ought to be Google. And so, as you say, what we’re seeing early stages of playing out is essentially AI Mode becoming an alternative to traditional search. It’ll give people information that they want in response to their search questions without having to go to the primary sources. And as you say, we’re already starting to see in people’s consumption behavior that that’s how people are indeed using it. They are engaged in an ongoing dialogue with AI mode and indeed the other AIs, and they’re more interested in the outcome than themselves scanning and going digging into the primary sources. It will produce, or should produce, a more efficient and convenient and helpful experience for the user. But we’re already starting to see some sites, including most notably in recent days, the Daily Mail, charging that this is inherently unfair, that those eyeballs that are staying in AI Mode or the other GPTs are coming at the expense of traffic to the underlying sources of the information and ideas that the AIs are relying on.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, Daily Mail saying on a lot of the search queries that would normally have brought people to its site, they’re down 89% in terms of traffic volume. If we go back to full screen on AI mode, just to show you those sources there in the right hand column, you can see them. That’s helpful and I think that’s great that Google has put them there. But again, are you going to click through to that now the question should be, does that matter? And I’m a bit torn about this, Sean, because on one hand, this is amazing. This is value added, this is productivity. You’re going to save, I don’t know, billions of human hours going through websites, collating information to come up with this wonderful little summary that AI mode does for you, like a normal LLM, but again, almost in real time, scouring the entire Internet.
The issue, Sean, is that traffic is plummeting for the websites that are providing all the information that is feeding all the LLMs and Google AI mode. So how do you square the circle, Sean, when the quality of these results, the efficiency of these results is undermining the very business model, the very viability of all the sources out there that are feeding into AI mode and feeding into LLMs?
SEAN SPEER: That’s precisely the question that we need to collectively ask ourselves, isn’t it? That we’re on the cusp of this new technology that is changing the way that people are engaging with the Internet and its rich body of content. And as efficient and, and convenient and helpful as it is for consumers, if it ultimately comes at the expense of the underlying content, if for all intents and purposes the AIs cannibalize the information that they need to generate those results for people, that obviously is a problem. And so what will be fascinating in the coming months and years is how we work through that problem. I know we can count on different voices arguing for a government solution, right, Rudyard, the kind of equivalent of Bill C18, the Online News Act, but this time not applying to digital advertising revenue, but instead an argument about the AIs essentially drawing on output generated by, by newspapers or by news sites.
You know, I think it’s fair to say we’d both be inclined to some sort of more market based outcome whereby, you know, we find new and different ways to generate traffic and engagement and indeed possible partnerships between the AI companies and the underlying sources of information. But I think it’s fair to say whatever that solution ultimately looks like, the reason we’re talking about this for our listeners and viewers is because you can bet that this is going to be a pressing public policy issue in Canada, in the U.S., in other parts of the world, and indeed a part of trade negotiations moving forward. You’re hearing it here now. I think you can count on hearing it more and more in the coming months and years.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: And that’s where I want to end with you, Sean. We had a report just in the last 12 hours that Donald Trump is out saying that countries who unfairly tax or regulate American big tech are going to face new punitive tariffs on all their imports in the U.S. it seems, regardless of whether you’re the EU and you have a “deal” or you’re Canada and you don’t have a deal if you’re regulating big tech. And it’s not just the digital services tax. In his remarks, Sean, he seemed to indicate that this was about any kind of system that was extracting, because of domestic rules in other countries, revenues from U.S. tech companies to pay for the public policy preferences of those domestic governments. And if there ever was a public policy preference here in Canada the last number of years, it’s something called the Online News Act that was brought in to try to get Meta, who backed out and dropped news from all their platforms in order not to come under the act, but ultimately to get Google to put $100 million a year into Canadian news organizations across Canada for having access to their content. So what do you think, Sean? Is this all like, what’s the expression, a dollar short and a day late in terms of our regulation of the Internet of AI in the midst of trade negotiation with a tempestuous and unpredictable president who seems pretty comfortable with American big tech and pretty keen on representing their interests. It just seems like a complete mess.
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, I wanna go to the last point in particular because I think it’s so fascinating, Rudyard, that there is something inherent to the American political system that sees the interests of America pretty synonymous with the interests of American business and certainly American technological dominance. It’s fair to say that President Trump and the Trump administration more broadly over the past decades or so has had its own problems with Silicon Valley and the country’s big tech industry. He doesn’t, on the face of it, seem like an intuitive champion for American big tech. At various times he’s accused big tech of targeting his supporters and, and blocking information and all the rest. But there’s just something kind of inherent to the American political system. Whoever’s at the top can, can come and go, but the American political institution, American politics, understand that a kind of crucial part of the exercise of hard and soft power is to protect and advance the interests of American technology. And that, of course, manifests itself in part in ensuring that other countries around the world are broadly aligning their policies with the Americans when it comes to these issues. And so I think you’re right. Among the various costs of doing business with respect to a future Canada-U.S. trade deal, whatever form it takes, I think it’s fair to assume is going to involve a kind of red line on Canada diverging from American policy when it comes to these different platforms.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, we’re losing a lot of sovereignty. Sean. Let’s go back to Google AI Mode just for a send off. Here I asked the latest question, is Sean Speer handsome? Google AI Mode answers Determining whether a person is handsome is a subjective judgment. If you’re interested in forming your own opinion, you can view photographs of Sean Speer from public sources and look at them. Sean, six sites with lovely photos of you in various stages of grizzled beardness. I think you’re kind of handsome.
SEAN SPEER: It sounds like the AI still needs some work, Rudyard.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: It’s hallucinating. Thanks for coming on the program and breaking this down with us. Appreciate it.
SEAN SPEER: Good talking to you.
