AI Overview and Content Attribution: A Personal Experience
Introduction
Last week, I encountered an AI Overview search result designed to answer online queries. I asked it multiple questions about topics I’ve recently covered, so I wasn’t shocked to see my article linked as a footnote at the bottom of the answer box. However, I was surprised by how much the first paragraph of the AI Overview resembled my original work.
Reece Rogers via Google
Impact on Featured Snippets
Without the AI Overviews enabled, my article often appeared as the featured snippet at the top of Google search results, providing a clear link for users seeking advice on using the Claude chatbot. During my initial tests, the featured snippet still appeared for relevant queries but was pushed beneath the AI Overview answer, which pulled from my reporting and inserted aspects of it into a 10-item bulleted list.
Google’s Response
In email exchanges and a phone call, a Google spokesperson acknowledged that AI-generated summaries might use portions of writing directly from web pages. They defended AI Overviews as conspicuously referencing back to the original sources. However, in my case, the first paragraph of the answer was not directly attributed to me. Instead, my original article was one of six footnotes hyperlinked near the bottom of the result. With source links located so far down, it’s hard to imagine any publisher receiving significant traffic in this situation.
“AI Overviews will conceptually match information that appears in top web results, including those linked in the overview,” wrote a Google spokesperson in a statement to WIRED. “This information is not a replacement for web content, but designed to help people get a sense of what’s out there and click to learn more.”
Discrepancies in Click-Through Rates
The Google spokesperson claimed, “We see that links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query.” However, no data to support this claim was offered to WIRED, making it impossible to independently verify the impact of the AI feature on click-through rates. It’s also worth noting that the company compared AI Overview referral traffic to more traditional blue-link traffic from Google, not to articles chosen for a featured snippet, where the rates are likely much higher.
Legal Perspective
After I reached out to Google about the AI Overview result that pulled from my work, the experimental AI search result for this query stopped showing up, but Google still attempted to generate an answer above the featured snippet.
Reece Rogers via Google
While many AI lawsuits remain unresolved, one legal expert specializing in copyright law was skeptical about my chances of winning any hypothetical litigation. Janet Fries, an attorney at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, stated:
“I think you would not have a strong case for copyright infringement. Copyright law, generally, is careful not to get in the way of useful things and helpful things.”
Her perspective focused on the type of content in this specific example of original work, explaining that it is quite difficult to make a claim about instructional or fact-based writing, like my advice column, versus more creative work, like poetry.
Conclusion
I’m definitely not the first person to suggest focusing on your intended audience when writing chatbot prompts, so I agree that the fact-based aspect of my writing complicates the overall situation. It’s hard for me, though, to imagine a world where Google arrives at that exact paragraph about Claude’s chatbot in its AI Overview results without referencing my work first.
2 Comments
Did you think the AI was going to cite you?
So, do you think Google owes you royalties or something?