Search engines powered by artificial intelligence could disrupt the digital economy in harmful ways, warns a researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center.
“If AI search becomes our primary portal to the web, it threatens to destabilize an already precarious digital economy,” wrote Benjamin Brooks in a recent article in MIT Technology Review.
“Today, online content production depends on a fragile set of incentives tied to virtual foot traffic: ads, subscriptions, donations, sales, or brand exposure,” he explained. “By hiding the web behind an omniscient chatbot, AI search could deprive creators of the visits and ‘eyeballs’ they need to survive.”
Brooks urges the AI industry to address content compensation before outside actors do. “The AI industry should use this narrow window of opportunity to build a smarter content marketplace before governments resort to interventions that are inefficient, favor a few selected players, or restrict the free flow of ideas across the web,” he wrote.
“We must remember these new systems and business models are only getting started,” he added in an interview with TechNewsWorld. “However we respond to these challenges, it’s important to do so thoughtfully, measuredly and precisely. That’s why industry should lead.”
“Governments are now more inclined to regulate content and negotiation processes than ever before,” he said. “AI search companies should pay attention. With increased pressure expected in the coming years, the industry should move proactively and build smarter solutions before governments turn to blunt tools.”
Uncertain effects of AI search
So far, the impact of AI search on creators’ revenues remains unclear. “It’s not definitive yet, but there’s a strong case that it will reduce traffic to many publishers,” said Greg Sterling, co-founder of Near Media, a site for news, commentary and analysis.
“The evidence is mixed,” he told TechNewsWorld. “During Google’s SGE experiment there were signs that organic links were pushed down the page and became less visible.” Google’s Search Generative Experience, launched in December 2023, provides AI-generated overviews of search topics.
“But,” he added, “there was limited research on actual click behavior. Google claims links in AI results receive more engagement. We need more research on this question.”
Chris Ferris, senior vice president for digital strategy at Pierpont Communications, a Houston PR firm, noted that AI search may exacerbate issues already present with traditional search. “Most web pages receive no traffic from organic search,” he told TechNewsWorld.
He cited research published by Search Engine Land predicting organic traffic declines between 18% and 64% because of AI search.
Mark N. Vena, CEO and lead analyst at SmartTech Research in Las Vegas, pointed to mounting evidence that AI-driven search—such as generative AI summaries in search engines—has reduced click-through rates to publishers’ websites, as users increasingly consume information directly from AI answers.
“News outlets and niche creators have reported lower traffic from traditional search sources when AI systems produce comprehensive answers,” he told TechNewsWorld. “While detailed consequence studies are ongoing, this trend suggests potential risks to publishers’ ad revenue and visibility.”
“There is no doubt AI-driven search tools risk reducing traffic to content providers’ sites, potentially undermining ad revenue and subscription models,” he added.
“If users don’t click through to original sources, creators may struggle to monetize their work, threatening the sustainability of quality journalism and niche content. Balancing AI-driven convenience with appropriate attribution and redirection to content providers will be crucial to preserving a healthy digital content ecosystem.”
Eyeball apocalypse overblown
Dev Nag, CEO and founder of QueryPal, a corporate chatbot in San Francisco, argues the doomsday narrative that AI search will destroy content creation by stealing eyeballs misunderstands how content ecosystems evolve.
“Consider how we moved from paid newspapers and centralized TV and film studios to ad-supported online content,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Each shift prompted predictions of doom, yet we ended up with far more content—and from many more creators—than ever before.”
“AI is poised to dramatically expand content reach through better discovery, translation and personalization. Rather than destroying the content economy, AI search is likely to create a more efficient marketplace where quality content finds its intended audience more effectively.”
He argues the evidence so far does not support an “eyeball apocalypse.”
“As AI search changes how people discover content, creators are adapting by producing more focused, higher-quality material that AI systems can better understand and distribute,” he said. “The real transformation is not about losing eyeballs. It’s about shifting from a mass-market advertising model to more sophisticated revenue-generation methods.”
Nag predicts two primary models will emerge: “content licensing,” where creators are paid for allowing AI systems to learn from and reference their work even if it is publicly available—similar to recent deals between major platforms and publishers—and a “revenue-sharing” system where AI platforms allocate income based on how often they reference and synthesize a creator’s content.
“This is currently feasible with RAG-based systems that can provide explicit references—like Perplexity—and can be adapted to systems trained with sophisticated attribution tracking,” he explained.
“Search engines could emulate TikTok and YouTube by sharing revenue to build up creators who feed their services,” added Rob Enderle, CEO and lead analyst at Enderle Group, a consulting firm in Bend, Oregon.
“But as AI advances,” he told TechNewsWorld, “it may need fewer human creators, which would be problematic for that outcome.”
Ross Rubin, lead analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer tech advisory in New York City, noted AI search is the culmination of trends seen for decades.
“Long before AI there was Ask Jeeves,” he told TechNewsWorld. “It didn’t fully succeed, but the idea was that instead of a pile of links you’d get a single answer. Often that’s what searchers want. It’s a better experience to receive synthesized information up front without assembling it from multiple sources.”
The downside of big-content deals
In his article, Brooks criticized AI companies that sign deals with major media firms to avoid lawsuits or government action. “This policy of selective concession is unsustainable,” he wrote. “It neglects the vast majority of creators online, who cannot easily opt out of AI search and lack the bargaining power of legacy publishers.”
“It reduces the urgency for reform by placating the loudest critics,” he continued. “It legitimizes a few AI firms through confidential and complex commercial arrangements, making it difficult for new entrants to secure equal terms or compensation and potentially entrenching a new generation of search monopolists.”
“Over time it could create perverse incentives for AI companies to favor low-cost and low-quality sources over higher-quality but more expensive news or content, encouraging a culture of uncritical information consumption,” he added.
At this stage in AI search development, Sterling said it remains too early to determine how the landscape will settle. “We have many assumptions and fears, but we need to test them and produce real data so we’re not operating from pure speculation,” he observed.