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Why the post-search era still belongs to Google. Plus: Exa hits $2.2 billion, a fraudster runs a fake AI news network, and OpenAI tries to label its own images.
For a moment, Google looked vulnerable. Then came I/O. The company emerged not just unfazed by the shift to AI-everywhere search, but more firmly in charge of it than ever. My new column explains why the post-search era still belongs to Google, and what that means for any publisher or brand trying to stay findable.
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The end of 10 blue links is not the end of Google
For a while, it seemed like Google Search was in trouble.
Seemingly caught by surprise by the AI revolution that ChatGPT sparked, Google looked old and confused as upstarts like OpenAI and Perplexity pointed to a new future that replaced the “10 blue links” with question-and-answer conversations. Google’s first steps into this future were unsteady, with error-filled answers epitomized by the infamous glue-on-pizza moment. Some suspected, for all its scale and influence, a post-Google world was near.
That looks a lot less likely after this week. At Google I/O, the company confidently showed us its version of our informational future. And while it might be post-search, it’s not at all post-Google. Google is expanding its use of AI Overviews, meaning more searches will include the top-of-page summaries, and it’s adding a query box within them. When a user engages with it, they’re kicked to AI Mode, which abandons the “10 blue links” altogether.
In addition, Google.com now has a “+” icon, similar to its Gemini chatbot. If a user engages with it and uploads a file or photo, that will also take them to AI Mode. It’s now extremely difficult to search on a Google product without AI being part of the result. You can still find your page of links by switching to “Web,” though that option is often buried.
So, far from the future where search is competitive again, it’s increasingly looking like a new future that’s the same as the old future. Even if you look just at AI chatbots, the Gemini app is now at 900 million users, making it about as big as ChatGPT. That doesn’t even count AI Overviews and AI Mode, which have 2.5 billion and 1 billion users, respectively, according to the company.
The story for media isn’t just that clicks will continue to plummet. It’s that a new internet is taking shape, one where bots dominate.
Read the rest at mediacopilot.ai
The Chatbox
All the AI news that matters to media*
An AI search startup just hit a $2.2 billion valuation
Exa Labs just tripled its valuation to $2.2 billion in a $250 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Bloomberg reported. The startup has built a search engine designed specifically for AI agents, and CEO William Bryk says bots will soon search the web more than humans do. The pitch has investors convinced AI agents are the next tectonic shift in how people interact with information. The awkward backstory: a media researcher previously identified Exa as a key vendor in the unlicensed publisher content market. That has not slowed the round. For publishers, the takeaway is twofold. Demand for their content from AI buyers is rising fast, and so is the universe of middlemen profiting from it without permission. (AI-assisted)
A convicted fraudster ran a network of fake AI news sites
Drew Chapin, who pleaded guilty to investor fraud in 2021, is now linked to a network of 17 AI-generated fake local news sites built to manipulate search results, according to a Florida Trib investigation with KCRW's Question Everything. The sites featured fabricated reporters with AI-created headshots, lifted stories from real outlets, and republished them as original work, three a day, seven days a week. Chapin’s firm, The Discoverability Company, sold online reputation management services. The fake-news network appears to have been a tool of the trade, designed to bury negative information about clients in search and AI answers. The case is one early data point in what will likely become a sprawling category of AI-enabled information laundering. (AI-assisted)
OpenAI rolls out a layered system to flag AI-generated images
OpenAI announced a multi-layered approach to identifying AI-generated images this week, the company said. A new partnership with Google DeepMind will embed SynthID invisible watermarks in images from ChatGPT, Codex, and the OpenAI API, while OpenAI is also broadening its support for the C2PA provenance standard. The two methods are meant to back each other up. C2PA metadata can be stripped, while SynthID is designed to survive screenshots and format changes. A new public verification tool lets anyone check whether an image came from one of OpenAI’s systems. OpenAI admits no single method is foolproof, a useful reminder for newsroom verification teams: detection tools help, but judgment still has to be human. (AI-assisted)
*AI-assisted news items are drafted with AI and then carefully edited by Media Copilot editors.