The tool has drawn interest as it offers a novel way for users to engage with AI, but there are worries that it can affect traffic to news publishers like us.

Other attempts to examine AI-powered summaries have been made; examples include the now-closed Artifact app from Instagram's co-founders and initiatives from major tech companies, such as Google's Search Generative Experience web page summarizing tool. But because to its distinctive gesture design and user experience, Arc's pinch-to-summarize feature got users talking on social media sites like Threads and X thanks to its eye-catching transition animation.


You may now pinch while on a page using the latest version of Arc Search for iOS, and the browser will display an AI-powered summary with several points.
 

The gesture is neat to use and observe since it creates a fluid transition effect and folds a web page in an origami-style when the browser generates a summary. Furthermore, the small tactile signals enhance the satisfaction of this result.

But in our testing, we found that the AI summaries themselves are frequently lacking. For example, rather than just stating that Google is terminating Gmail's basic HTML view, we modified an earlier story to highlight the web myth that the business is discontinuing Gmail. The crucial detail that we had contributed to the story—that Gmail closure rumors were untrue—was not included in Arc's synopsis.


A few more difficulties occurred as well. The program failed to function when we attempted to summarize a recipe page in Hindi. There were no specifics on how to make the dish—we were just given points like the amount of time to prep, cook, and how many calories. The summary feature's poor performance in other languages has also been brought up by other users. (We've enquired with Arc regarding language support for this feature; if we hear back, we'll update with further details.)
 

We received a passable AI-powered summary including ingredients, recipe directions, and extra advice on an English-language chocolate cookie baking page, but we had to scroll down to see those important details. The only valuable information we obtained from the summary when we generated it without scrolling down was the list of ingredients and cooking time.

When reading about the calendar for the next Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, the AI summary omitted a detail about one section of the schedule being released following the announcement of the dates for the country's general elections.
 

Arc Search attempted to summarize Bluesky's federation blog, but the wording came out as more robotic than helpful. It also overlooked crucial topics, such moderation, that consumers could find significant.

Although the functionality produced helpful summaries for a large number of pages and articles, we believed that we should check to see if anything was still missing. It is difficult to completely depend on these summaries unless the relevance of the information is negligible, as demonstrated by the aforementioned examples, wherein AI occasionally overlooks important information. It makes sense that this is the first version of Arc's feature and that there isn't enough room to include everything in the synopsis.


Nevertheless, there are issues with AI-powered summary features elsewhere as well.

The updates on the Gmail scam in the previously mentioned post were overlooked by both Perplexity and ChatGPT. Also, Gemini provided us with a meaningless synopsis of the IPL schedule piece.

Additionally, there are worries that Arc's strategy would be detrimental to media. Several journalists have brought up this worry this week, including Casey Newton of The Platformer, who discussed how Arc's strategy might be detrimental to both journalism and the web in general. The Garbage Day newsletter publisher Ryan Broderick noted in a Fast Company piece that businesses developing AI-powered search are not considering the impact their strategy may have on websites and people's incentive to contribute to the web.

These are legitimate worries for news consumers as well as publishers, as AI may not be dependable enough to provide correct information if it omits crucial details from a summary.
 

Though some users might click to read the entire article, Arc Search's summary feature is currently unable to share these summaries in addition to incorporating the source's link. (We questioned Arc about the potential for implementing this functionality as well as its long-term goals for enhancing the summaries' quality.)

Arc also changed its AI-powered "Browse for me" search to allow users to share the pages that were produced as search results. In order to allow users to access links or read more, the company also added clickable connections to such pages. In a recent version, Arc also included incognito mode for the mobile browser.
 

The importance of data for AI and giving that value back to content creators is a topic of greater concern. Many people tend to ignore minor errors or leave out certain facts when AI features are retrieving results. But it needs to be more precise and dependable in order to meet the pricing and valuations that AI firms are demanding.