Abstract:

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) summarization by online search platforms poses an existential threat to content providers (CPs). Increasingly, organic search content is being replaced by an ``overview'' – a synthesis of relevant content into a summary – produced by generative AI. While this shift might provide consumers with greater value by reducing search costs, it may potentially undermine the revenues of CPs by reducing traffic to CPs. Anti-trust authorities are rolling out regulation that forces platforms to allow CPs to opt out of summarization, without affecting their prominence in organic search results. We build a model to explore these various concerns. We find conditions under which an opt-out regulation leads to perverse effects. Specifically, P may respond to the regulation by summarizing more aggressively, reducing the value of organic search to consumers and thus the value of opting out to CPs, bringing required payments from P to CPs down. This can bring the total value for CPs down, leading to less content.

Joint work with Erik Madsen

Location:

Room 2E29, CEPS ENS Paris-Saclay
4 avenue des Sciences, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette