Taboola’s clickbaity chumbox is evolving into an AI chatbot

Taboola, the company best known for serving up those weird, clickbaity advertisements you often find beneath online articles, has created an AI chatbot. The tool, called “DeeperDive,” is launching in beta on USA Today and The Independent, and will answer readers’ questions using information “sourced from trusted journalists.”

A demo on Taboola’s site shows a DeeperDive search bar at the top of USA Today’s homepage, which automatically surfaces prompts like “How is the UK government addressing the cost of living crisis in 2025?” and “What are the environmental implications of the latest oil drilling projects in the North Sea?”

Along with providing an AI-generated response, the chatbot also lists related USA Today articles, followed by a sponsored link. In its announcement, Taboola says DeepDive allows publishers to insert “contextually relevant, high-intent ads directly into the AI-powered results page.” Readers can also highlight a portion of an article and ask questions about it with DeepDive.

The AI bot will only appear for one percent of USA Today’s audience while it gets assessed for quality. The Verge reached out to Taboola for more information about how many readers of The Independent will see DeepDive, but didn’t immediately hear back.

This isn’t the first time USA Today’s publisher, Gannett, has used AI. In 2023, the company paused its AI-generated sports coverage following backlash from reporters and readers. It also added what appeared to be AI-generated articles to its Reviewed site, which it later shut down (but has since been brought back under a new owner). USA Today also began testing AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of articles last year.