Google's AI search gives websites dire choice: Share data or die

Publishers say blocking the company’s AI bot could also prevent their sites from showing up in search

Should publishers block Google from crawling their websites to bolster their AI — similar to what some have done to other AI companies — they run the risk not being discoverable through the tech giant's search engine. 

Google now displays convenient artificial intelligence-based answers at the top of its search pages — meaning users may never click through to the websites whose data is being used to power those results. But many site owners say they can’t afford to block Google’s AI from summarising their content.

That’s because the Google tool that sifts through web content to come up with its AI answers is the same one that keeps track of web pages for search results, according to publishers. Blocking Google, the way sites have blocked some of its AI competitors, would also hamper a site’s ability to be discovered online.