Google Scholar now adds AI outlines to research papers

Google Search may not get a lot of love these days, but a niche Chrome extension launched in March — Google Scholar PDF Reader — counts 500,000 users who leave largely positive reviews : “A revolutionary game changer. Considering naming my first-born child after this chrome extension.”

Google’s promise with the launch of the extension was to “supercharge your PDF reading” by making it easier for academics (or anyone else) to read research paper PDFs — turning all citations into links and giving the ability to jump quickly between sections via an automated table of contents, for instance.

This week, Google updated the extension with AI outlines, intended to help “researchers everywhere read all that is on their pending paper piles quickly and thoroughly.” The outlines appear in a sidebar alongside the PDF, and you can skim them or, in Google’s words, “click on a bullet to deep read where it gets interesting.” Here’s what it looks like when I tested it on a preprint, “The Consumption of Pink Slime Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?“

I found the feature to be less about AI summarization, more about easier navigation and getting to the parts of a paper most relevant to you. Some disagree. You can see what you think by testing it here.