SAN FRANCISCO — Publishers across the web are reportedly drafting farewell letters to their remaining readers after Google replaced search results with an AI that answers questions by summarizing articles it never visits. The new system, called “Google Oblivion,” provides perfect answers while carefully ensuring no human writer ever sees a penny of ad revenue.
Industry analysts confirm traffic has plummeted so dramatically that some newsrooms now measure visitors in single digits. “At first we thought it was a glitch,” said one editor, refreshing a page showing three lonely clicks. “Then we realized Google just taught a robot to plagiarize us more efficiently.” The AI reportedly delivers Pulitzer-level analysis while citing sources as “the internet, probably.”
Desperate publishers have begun experimenting with radical survival strategies, like writing articles entirely in emoji or pivoting to “vintage news” about events from 2003. One lifestyle site now exclusively covers what celebrities were doing before the AI apocalypse, under the new vertical “Remember When People Read Things?”
Google responded to concerns by suggesting publishers “try being more shareable,” then demonstrated how its AI could generate a 5,000-word investigative piece in seconds titled “Why Your Job No Longer Exists.” Meanwhile, the last human journalist was seen applying for a prompt engineering gig at an AI startup that promises to “disrupt the concept of truth.”
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