A story in the Guardian and another at Bloomberg drive home a similar point: These are trying times for the nation's food bloggers, thanks to artificial intelligence. In fact, the word "trying" might be an understatement. "For websites that depend on the advertising model, I think this is an extinction event in many ways," Matt Rodbard, founder of the website Taste, tells the Guardian. The problem is that AI tools are scooping up their recipes, which for the most part are not protected by copyright. Bloggers have tended to rely on offering recipes up for free while collecting ad revenue from visitors to their sites—but more people are relying on the "AI Overview" in their searches and not venturing further.
Carrie Forrest of Clean Eating Kitchen tells Bloomberg she has lost 80% of her traffic—and, thus, her revenue—over the last two years. The trend accelerated in March when Google launched AI Mode. Forrest used to employ 10 people. Today? Zero. "I'm going to have to find something else to do," she says. Google justifies its AI summaries as a way to give people a "starting point to learn about a dish," noting that it includes links to original sources for people to explore further. The problem, says Karen Tedesco of the Familystyle Food blog, is that "I don't think many people are actually clicking on the source links."
"At this point," she adds, "they're absolutely trusting in the results that are getting thrown in their faces." That presents another issue addressed in both stories. Sometimes those AI summaries mash together elements from different recipes—"Frankensteined" is the word used by the Guardian—with awful results. Eb Gargano of Easy Peasy Foodie spotted an "AI Slop" version of her Christmas cake that instructed people to bake it for up to 4 hours at 320 degrees. "You'd end up with charcoal!" she says.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
