Google’s AI Overviews Just Hit a Trust Wall
Plus: The next evolution of marketing collateral: it talks back
📅 January 29, 2026 | ⏱️ 4-min read
Good Morning!
Today’s theme: when AI gets between customers and the thing they came for, somebody pays. Sometimes it’s the publisher. Sometimes it’s your support team. Sometimes it’s your brand.
The Executive Hook:
AI is getting faster at “helping.” The question is whether customers still feel helped, or quietly herded. If your experience starts to feel like an AI detour instead of a straight line, trust drops, complaints go up, and your humans end up cleaning up the mess. Fun.
🧠 THE DEEP DIVE: UK Regulator Wants Publishers to Opt Out of Google’s AI Overviews Without Losing Rankings
The Big Picture: The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed changes that would let publishers opt out of Google’s AI features (like AI Overviews) without hurting their placement in standard search results.
What’s happening:
Publishers say AI Overviews are cutting clicks. When answers show up in the search results, fewer people visit the original source.
The CMA is trying to rebalance control. The proposal is basically: “If Google uses your content for AI, you should have a clean opt-out that doesn’t punish you elsewhere.”
Google is signaling it will adjust controls, but warns about UX fragmentation. Google says it’s exploring updates, while arguing changes should not create confusing search experiences.
Why it matters:
This is not just a media story. It’s a customer journey story. AI summaries are the new “front door” for discovery. If that front door becomes a black box, you get a trust problem: brands and publishers feel exploited, and customers start wondering what’s real, what’s sponsored, and what’s missing. If regulators force clearer controls and transparency, expect the same expectation to show up in your world: “Let me see the source,” “Let me choose,” “Don’t quietly reroute me.”
The takeaway:
If your AI experiences summarize, recommend, or redirect, build in the opt-out muscle now: clear sources, clear choices, clear handoffs to humans. “Helpful” is not a vibe. It’s a design requirement.
Source: UK pushes Google to allow sites to opt out of AI Overviews
📊 CX BY THE NUMBERS: AI Gains Show Up When Teams Stop “Piloting” and Start Redesigning Work
Data Source: The Hackett Group, 2026 Enterprise Key Issues Study
54% of organizations are scaling AI to improve customer satisfaction and experience.
Among those, 76% report 25%+ improvement in key CX metrics.
69% are scaling AI to improve employee productivity, and 80% report 25%+ gains. Translation: better internal speed often precedes better customer speed.
The Insight:
The “AI doesn’t work” narrative usually means “we bolted it on.” These numbers point to a different reality: when companies redesign workflows (not just add a chatbot), outcomes move. The CX lesson is painfully simple: automation without process clarity just creates faster confusion.
Source: AI Momentum Accelerates as Enterprises Reimagine Work
🧰 THE AI TOOLBOX: Jotform AI Chatbot for Canva
The Tool: Jotform just launched a native AI chatbot integration for Canva designs.
What it does:
Turns a static Canva design into a conversational experience. People can ask questions, book appointments, track orders, or submit inquiries without leaving the design.
CX Use Case:
Campaign-to-conversation in one step: Put a chatbot directly inside that promo one-pager or event graphic so customers can ask “Does this apply to me?” right now.
Fewer dead ends: If your “beautiful PDF” is currently a customer trap (you know the ones), this gives customers a way out that doesn’t involve rage-clicking your contact page.
Trust:
They’re positioning it as customizable to match brand look and able to pull relevant text from the design to inform responses. That’s good, but your real trust lever is governance: what sources it can use, what it must refuse, and when it escalates.
Source: Jotform Brings AI-Powered Chatbots to Canva Designs
⚡ SPEED ROUND: Quick Hits
ServiceNow inks another AI partnership, this time with Anthropic — If your service workflows already live in ServiceNow, this is another signal that “agentic” is moving from slideware to default settings.
Google adds Gemini AI-powered ‘auto browse’ to Chrome — Customers will get used to browsers doing multi-step tasks, which raises the bar for how frictionless your web experience needs to be (and how robust your guardrails must be).
HeyMarvin launches agentic AI search for customer research — Faster insight retrieval sounds great until teams stop validating what they learn. The winners will be the ones who keep a tight link between insight and evidence.
📡 THE SIGNAL: The new CX battleground is “who controls the path”
Customers do not wake up hoping for an AI relationship. They wake up wanting to get something done. When AI inserts itself between intent and outcome, it can feel like magic or like a speed bump wearing a smile.
Today’s stories point to the same leadership truth: control matters. Control for publishers, control for customers, control for your frontline teams who inherit every broken promise. Build AI that shortens the path, shows its work, and knows when to get out of the way.
See you tomorrow,
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