New York (CNN) — The introduction of Google's advanced artificial intelligence model, Gemini, into its search engine has set off alarm bells for publishers. Announced on Tuesday, the new feature will directly answer user queries at the top of search results pages, reducing the need for users to click on external links to find the information they seek. "Google will do the Googling for you," the company explained.

While this might sound convenient for users, it spells trouble for news publishers already grappling with declining traffic. The revamped search experience could further reduce their audience, depriving them of readers and revenue. Google's executives noted, “Google will take care of the legwork,” effectively using human-written articles and expertise from across the internet without driving traffic to those sources.

The news industry reacted swiftly to Google's announcement. Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, told CNN, “This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as Google’s new feature leaves even less incentive to click through to our sites, making it harder to monetize our content.”

Google's new AI feature, Gemini, aims to enhance user experience by summarizing information directly on the search results page, potentially reducing the need for users to visit external websites. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro during the Google I/O developer conference.

Coffey, whose organization represents over 2,000 news publishers, criticized the move, stating, “The little traffic we get today will be further diminished. This time with a product that directly competes with our content, using our content to fuel it. This is a perverse twist on ‘innovation.’”

This development is poised to further strain an industry already hit hard by Big Tech. The announcement comes as OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch its own AI-powered search engine. Since ChatGPT's debut over a year ago, publishers have been concerned about the impact of AI on their businesses. The rapid pace of technological advancements has left them little time to plan their responses.

Some newsrooms have partnered with tech giants, licensing their content archives to companies like OpenAI. Others, like The New York Times, have taken a more adversarial approach, even filing a lawsuit against OpenAI.

While once collaborative, the relationship between publishers and tech companies has soured in recent years. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook deprioritized news articles, cutting off initiatives that once supported publishers. Google has maintained a better relationship but has faced criticism, especially after temporarily blocking some California news outlets in response to legislation requiring it to pay publishers.

Anticipating the backlash, Google argued that its AI changes would benefit news companies by showing more links with its AI Overviews feature and improving search traffic to publishers. “We see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query,” Google stated. “As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”

However, skepticism remains high. Marc McCollum, chief innovation officer at Raptive, expressed concerns: “Our initial analysis suggests it will significantly reduce search traffic to content creators’ websites, directly impacting their ad revenue and, by extension, their livelihoods. This change could put the future of the open internet in danger.”

The introduction of Gemini into Google's search engine represents a significant shift that could reshape the landscape of digital publishing. As publishers brace for the impact, the debate over the balance between technological innovation and content creators’ rights continues to intensify.