AI bots such as Gemini are not reliable news sources. Yet readers trust the quick summaries they provide. Research by cybersecurity company Cloudflare shows that people are increasingly less likely to click through to the original source. Around the same time, Pew Research also observed a halving of click-through rates.

In November, almost all Dutch media sent an urgent letter to the negotiating parties. They expressed their concerns about the power and influence of AI companies. Media outlets warned that they risk being overtaken by Gemini and other artificial summarizers, and asked the government for protection.

Cursor

Higher education media were not part of this urgent letter, but they share the same concerns. Marieke Verbiesen, Editor-in-Chief of Cursor at TU/e, had her website traffic decline investigated by her hosting company. The host considered it possible that AI summaries discourage readers from visiting the original source.

Other education publications are seeing similar drops in readership. HOP spoke with Willem Andrée, Editor-in-Chief of Resource at Wageningen University. Andrée has noticed fewer visitors to the website and attributes this, among other things, to Google’s AI responses. “I am very concerned about this,” he says.

Truth-finding

Media organizations are reluctant to publicly disclose the full extent of the problem, but it is clear they feel threatened. AI companies use media content as a source, while simultaneously drawing readers away from the same media. “Together, this causes news organizations to lose reach and revenue on a large scale,” they write in the urgent letter.

As a university publication, Andrée’s Resource does not rely heavily on advertising, but he still wants his journalistic work to be read. 

“It’s such a shame that we are losing readers to AI. Moreover, you want people to get their information from the source, regardless of whether it generates revenue. AI is undermining that principle.”

Paywall

Media companies are calling on the Dutch government to implement European AI regulations through strict legislation. This could help combat “illegal scraping.” 

It appears that some AI companies even extract articles from behind paywalls, or content where the author has explicitly stated it should not be included in AI databases.

The New York Times encountered the same problem and filed a lawsuit against several major AI companies. Chatbots sometimes quote Times articles verbatim that are only available online to subscribers, which the newspaper argues threatens to undermine a key pillar of democracy.

This concern is shared by Dutch media, as shown in the urgent letter. According to the letter, society is losing its grip on “information provision focused on truth-finding and diversity” due to the dominance of large tech companies.

And: “The less room there is for journalistic reporting, the less we know about what is really happening in our country and in the world.”

Protection

Media can take some protective measures. Software exists that keeps AI robots (“crawlers”) out. Cloudflare makes this available for free to journalistic media, and there seems to be interest in the Netherlands.

However, Cloudflare is ultimately a commercial company, and with tech firms, it is always uncertain how long “free” will remain free.

Another option is to implement strict paywalls or to completely avoid Google, Andrée of Resource at Wageningen University considers. But would new readers still be able to find you?

Andrée believes that legislation is ultimately necessary. “I would like to see European legislation implemented here quickly. Things are moving so fast. The time for standing by is over.”

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.