The company's Arc Browser, a browser focused on a less cluttered web experience, launched a new feature in its Arc Search mobile app that uses ai to summarize web pages. The feature involves a clever “pinch” gesture that displays a carefully formatted summary with the main points.
The feature has attracted attention because it presents a new dynamic for interacting with ai, but there are also concerns that it could affect traffic to news publishers, like us.
We've seen other efforts to analyze ai-powered summaries, such as Artifact, the closed app from the co-founders of Instagram, as well as from tech giants, such as Google's Search Generative Experience web page summary feature. However, due to its unique user experience and gesture design, Arc's pinch-to-snap option earned people in social media through platforms as Threads and x speaking due to the attractive transition animation.
If you have the new version of Arc Search on iOS, you can now pinch while on a page and the browser will show you an ai-powered summary with different points.
The gesture is cool to use and look at, because when you pinch a web page, it folds in origami style while the browser generates a summary, and the transition effect is smooth. And this effect is more satisfying due to the subtle haptic cues.
However, in our tests, ai summaries themselves often miss the mark. For example, we updated a previous story to address online deception that Google is discontinuing Gmail rather than simply noting that the company is discontinuing Gmail's basic HTML view. Arc's summary missed the important part about rumors about Gmail shutting down being false, which we added at the beginning of the story.
Image credits: Screenshot from TechCrunch
There were some other hiccups as well. When we tried to summarize a page of recipes in Hindi, the feature did not work. We just looked at points like prep time, cooking time, and calorie count without any details on how to prepare the dish. Other users have also pointed out that the summary function does not work well with other languages. (We've asked Arc about language support for this feature and will update with additional information if we hear back.)
On an English page for baking chocolate chip cookies, we got a decent ai-powered summary that included ingredients, recipe instructions, and additional tips, but we had to scroll down to include those key points. When we generated the summary without scrolling down, we only got the ingredients and cooking time as useful points in the summary.
While reading something about the schedule of the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, the ai summary omitted a point about a part of the schedule that was released after the dates of the general elections in India were announced.
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When Arc Search tried to summarize Bluesky's blog about the federation.the text seemed more robotic than explanatory, and left out some of the points, such as moderation, that might be important to users.
The feature generated useful summaries for many articles and pages, but we felt we had to double check if anything was missing. As seen in the examples above, ai can sometimes miss critical information when summarizing, so it is difficult to fully trust these summaries unless the importance of the information is trivial. Understandably, this is the first iteration of the Arc feature and also has limited space to include all of the summary points.
That said, there is also a problem with ai-powered summary functions elsewhere.
Both Perplexity and ChatGPT missed the update on the Gmail hoax in the article mentioned above. And Gemini gave us a useless summary of the IPL schedule article.
Image credits: Gemini
There are concerns that Arc's approach could also be detrimental to journalism, an issue several journalists raised this week., including The Platformer's Casey Newton, who talked about what Arc's approach might look like harmful to journalism and the web in generall. Ryan Broderick, who publishes The Garbage Day newsletter, wrote ai-search-engine” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>a fast company column that noted that companies creating ai-powered searches aren't thinking about how their approach could impact websites and people's motivation to contribute to the web.
These are valid concerns, not only for editors but also for news consumers, because if ai leaves out important points in a summary, it may not be reliable to trust. the function to obtain accurate information.
At this time, Arc Search's summary feature cannot share these summaries along with embedding the source link; at least some people can click to read the full article. (We asked Arc about the possibility of introducing such a feature and also how it plans to improve the quality of the summaries over time.)
Additionally, Arc updated its “Search for Me” ai-powered search to make pages generated as search results shareable. Additionally, the company made links within those pages clickable so people could visit links or read more. Arc also added incognito mode to the mobile browser in its recent update.
There is a broader discussion about the value of data for ai and ai-reads-the-internet-for-us-200246690.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>return that value to content creators. Many people may overlook smaller errors or leave out some details when ai functions search for answers. However, for the price and valuations that ai companies demand, it needs to be more accurate and reliable.
