Amid rising publisher woes over AI overviews, Google to host News Summit on Aug 8 in Bengaluru

New Delhi: With publishers across India losing organic traffic due to Google’s AI-generated summaries (AI Overviews), the tech giant is convening its India News Summit 2025 on August 8 in Bengaluru.

This year’s edition, the fourth since its inception, comes with a theme that reflects the friction: “Bridging the Gap.”

According to Google, the summit will focus on two critical areas: unlocking the transformative potential of AI in newsrooms and meeting the evolving demands of young news consumers. 

But for many Indian publishers, the real “gap” is one of visibility and value, especially as AI Overviews increasingly divert clicks from original news sources.

For the first time, the event will adopt a hybrid format, with sessions available in five Indian languages, aiming to expand reach across national, regional, and digital-native newsrooms.

The event will be held at Google’s Ananta Office in Bengaluru.

Since the rollout of AI Overviews in India earlier this year, publishers have raised concerns about sharp drops in referral traffic, as users often get summarised answers directly from search results without clicking through. The feature, powered by generative AI, pulls snippets from various sources but frequently omits attribution or buries links, undermining the visibility and revenue model of content creators.

Google’s India News Summit began in 2021 as part of its broader Google News Initiative (GNI). Previous editions focused on digital transition, revenue diversification, fact-checking, and audience development. However, this year’s summit is expected to be the most scrutinised yet, given the rising anxiety around AI’s impact on content discoverability.

At the summit, whether Google will directly confront publisher concerns around AI Overviews remains to be seen. Will the summit bring clarity on revenue sharing or any mechanisms to restore lost traffic? And how does the platform plan to reconcile its aggressive AI push with the need for a sustainable news ecosystem?

As the creator economy booms, newsrooms find themselves under growing pressure to rethink how they create, distribute, and monetise content, often within platforms where they have little control.