You can distinguish these AI-titled stories in a couple of ways. At the top of the card for a trending topic, rather than a single outlet’s icon and name, you’ll see up to three icons with text reading something like Android Authority +11. Trending topics also lack the Follow button that cards for a single outlet’s work feature in the top right corner.
Tapping a trending topic’s Frankensteined AI title opens an AI-generated summary, and tapping the Outlet +X text at the top of the card takes you to a list of individual stories, complete with their intended headlines. But tapping the large featured image — which, again, is pulled from whichever outlet’s name appears first at the top of the card — takes you directly to that outlet’s content.
Ideally, Discover wouldn’t be summarizing content using AI at all — the tech has repeatedly been shown to be unreliable when it comes to understanding and relaying news stories. Given its statements to The Verge, though, this behavior has graduated from a small experiment to long-term feature — Google’s committed to the bit for the foreseeable future. If you’re getting your news from Discover, be extra sure to watch out for AI-generated misinformation.