Publishers fear chatbots and AI search summaries mean another drop in traffic to news sites

Search traffic to news sites has already plunged by a third in one year, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as artificial intelligence (AI) summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet.

An overwhelming majority are also planning to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom.