Browser company Arc, a browser focused on a less cluttered web experience, has released a new feature in its Arc Search mobile app that uses AI to summarize web pages. The feature includes a smart “pinch” gesture that shows a neat summary with main points.
The feature has drawn attention because it introduces a new dynamic for interacting with AI, but there’s also concern that it could affect traffic to news publishers like us.
We’ve seen other efforts to look at AI-powered summaries, such as Artifact, the shutter app from the co-founders of Instagram, as well as tech giants such as Google’s Search Generative Experience summary feature. However, because of its unique user experience and gesture design, Arc’s pinch-to-summarize took over People on social media on platforms like Threads and X talking because of the beautiful 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 bullet points.
The gesture is great to use and view because when you pinch a web page, it folds origami-style while the browser creates a summary and the transition effect is smooth. And this effect is more satisfying because of the subtle tactile cues.
However, in our tests, AI summaries themselves often miss the mark. For example, we updated an earlier story to address this online hoax Google is discontinuing Gmail instead of simply noting that the company is discontinuing Gmail’s basic HTML view. Arc’s summary missed the important part, stating that the Gmail shutdown rumors were false, which we added at the top of the story.
Image Credits: Screenshot from TechCrunch
There were a few other hiccups. When we tried to summarize a recipe page in Hindi, the function did not work. We just saw things like prep time, cook time and calorie count with no details on how the dish was actually made. Other users have also pointed out that the summary function does not work well 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-language page about baking chocolate chip cookies, we got a decent AI-powered summary that includes ingredients, recipe instructions, and additional tips, but we had to scroll down to include those key points. When we created the summary without scrolling down, we simply took the ingredients and cooking time as useful points in the summary.
Reading something about the schedule of the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, the AI digest missed a point about a part of the schedule that was released after the announcement of the Indian general election dates.
When Arc Search tried to summarize Bluesky’s blog about the federationthe text was more robotic than explanatory, and missed some of the points, like moderation, that might be important to users.
The feature generated useful summaries for many articles and pages, but we felt we needed to double-check if anything was missing. As shown in the examples above, AI can miss critical information during summarization at times, so it is difficult to fully rely on these summaries unless the importance of the information is trivial. Understandably, this is the first iteration of the Arc feature, and it also has limited space to fit in all of the summary points.
That said, there’s also a problem with AI-powered summary functions elsewhere as well.
Both Perplexity and ChatGPT missed the Gmail hoax update in the aforementioned article. And Gemini gave us a useless summary of the IPL schedule article.
Image Credits: Gemini
There are concerns that the Arc’s approach could be harmful to journalism as well — a point raised by several journalists this week, including The Platformer’s Casey Newton, who talked about what Arc’s approach might be like detrimental to journalism and the internet as a whole. Ryan Broderick, who publishes The Garbage Day newsletter, wrote a fast company column that pointed out that companies building AI search aren’t thinking about how their approach might affect websites and people’s motivations to contribute to the Web.
These are valid concerns, not only for publishers but also for news consumers, as if the AI misses important points in a summary, it may not be reliable the possibility for accurate information.
Currently, Arc Search’s summary feature cannot share these summaries along with embedding the source link. at least some people can click to read the whole article. (We asked Arc about the possibility of introducing such a feature, and also how it plans to improve the quality of summaries over time.)
In addition, Arc updated its search with artificial intelligence “Browse for me”. Make the pages generated as search results shareable. Additionally, the company has made the links within these pages clickable so users can visit links or read more. Arc also added incognito mode to the mobile browser in its recent update.
There is a broader debate about the value of data for AI and returning that value to content creators. Many people can overcome minor mistakes or miss certain details when AI functions receive answers. However, for the price and valuations that AI companies demand, it needs to be more accurate and reliable.
