OpenAI engineer said AI users won't click source links, sharpening publishers' traffic risk
Internal remarks quoted in litigation expose the economic gap between AI citation and publisher referral traffic.
The Register reports that an OpenAI software engineer said users would not click source links however prominently they appeared, while AI answer products retain the interface built on creators' work. The column also cites a Microsoft document quoted in The New York Times plaintiffs' legal brief warning that large language models could disrupt content producers and damage their own supply chain; the court has not ruled on those claims, which OpenAI and Microsoft dispute under fair use. If citations do not produce visits, publishers gain little audience or advertising value from supplying the material that makes those answers useful.