In the summer of 2025, Google was spotted using AI in our cherished Discover feeds. The tech giant was using AI to provide a short blurb/summary of the article in question right within the Discover feed, giving users a quick peek into what the article is about.
That’s cool and somewhat useful, as long as the AI gets things right.
Fast-forward to December 2025, and Google started testing AI-generated titles for stories that showed up on Discover. That’s where things went downhill.
Back then, the headlines that Discover was whipping up were far from the truth, i.e., they didn’t accurately depict what the story was about. Inversely, users and publications found the AI-generated headlines to actually be misleading and factually incorrect.
A story from 9to5Google, which was actually titled ‘Don’t buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger hoping for faster speeds – just get the ‘slower’ one instead‘ was retitled as ‘Qi2 slows older Pixels.’
Similarly, Ars Technica’s ‘Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to be priced like one‘ was changed to ‘Steam Machine price revealed.’
At the time, we believed that the inaccuracies were due to the feature being unstable and in early testing. In a statement given to The Verge at the time, Google acknowledged the experiment and said that it was “testing a new design that changes the placement of existing headlines to make topic details easier to digest before they explore links from across the web.”
Now, Google has stopped calling Discover replacing human-written headlines as an “experiment.” Instead, it has begun calling it a ‘feature,’ as highlighted in a statement from Google spokesperson Jennifer Kutz given to The Verge.
We launched a new feature last year in Discover to help people explore topics that are covered by multiple creators and websites. The feature includes a helpful AI-powered overview of the topic, a featured image, and links to related stories. The overview headline reflects information across a range of sites, and is not a rewrite of an individual article headline. This feature performs well for user satisfaction, and we continue to experiment with the UI to help people click through and explore content on the web.
According to Google, it is not individually looking at titles to retitle them. It is looking at topics that are trending and have been covered by multiple sources. When that happens, the AI attempts to gather information from all said sources and whip up the collective narrative into a single headline. The tech giant says that this performs will for user satisfaction.
It highlights a piece with a featured image from a top-tier publication like The Verge, and its story’s link. The telltale sign that an article headline has been replaced by AI is to look at the Discover card’s source. Normally, the top left highlights a single publication. In case Google Discover has parsed through several sources to form its headline, the Discover card will highlight the main source and show a tag with a plus number to highlight the additional outlets the AI has gathered information from, as seen in the screenshot below.
Additionally, Discover articles that are trending topics and have had their headlines swapped out by AI don’t feature a ‘Follow’ pill on the top right.
Although AI-generated headlines don’t show up for all Discover stories, Google indicating that the change is a feature and not an experiment, tells us a lot, and unless Google tunes its AI to accurately retitle articles (which it shouldn’t in the first place, but alas), Discover might continue to be a propagator of misinformation.
