AI search tools are rapidly gaining popularity, with nearly one in four Americans now saying they have used AI-driven insights in place of traditional search engines. These tools derive their value from crawling the internet for up-to-date, relevant information–content that is often produced by news publishers.
Yet, a troubling imbalance has emerged: While traditional search engines typically operate as an intermediary, guiding users to news websites and other quality content, generative search tools parse and repackage information themselves, cutting o trac ow to original sources. These chatbots’ conversational outputs also often obfuscate serious underlying issues with information quality. Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate how these systems access, present and cite news content.
Building on our previous research, The Tow Center for Digital Journalism conducted tests on eight generative search tools with live search features to assess their abilities to accurately retrieve and cite news content, as well as how they behave when they cannot.
