According to Google, Google has secretly struck deals with some publishers to use new AI-generated tools to publish articles. adweek. The deal is reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year and is apparently part of the Google News Initiative (GNI). This program, which provides funding to other newsrooms, is his six-year-long program. But the move to generative AI publishing tools will be a new, and perhaps controversial, step for the company.
according to adweek, the program is currently targeted at a “few” small publishers. “The beta tool allows resource-strapped publishers to index recently published reports produced by other organizations, such as government agencies or neighborhood news outlets, and summarize them to create new articles. By publishing as , you can create aggregated content more efficiently,” Adweek reports.
It is not clear exactly how much publishers will be paid under this arrangement, but adweek That’s a “five-digit amount” per year. In return, the media organization reportedly agreed to use the tool to publish at least three articles a day, one newsletter each week, and one marketing campaign each month.
Notably, publishers participating in the program do not appear to be required to disclose their use of AI, and aggregated websites may not be able to see their content written by AI on other sites. They are also not informed that they are being used to create a story that The AI-generated copy reportedly uses a color-coding system to indicate the trustworthiness of each section of text so that human editors can review the content before publication.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.in a statement to adweek The company said it is “in the early stages of exploring ideas that may provide AI-enabled tools to assist journalists in their work.” The spokesperson added that AI tools “are not intended to and cannot replace journalists’ critical role in reporting, writing and fact-checking stories.”
It’s unclear what Google stands to gain from the deal, but it wouldn’t be the first tech company to pay newsrooms for the use of its proprietary tools. The deal has some similarities to previous deals Facebook struck with publishers to create live video content in 2016. Social media companies made headlines for paying publishers to leverage their nascent video platforms, with dozens of media outlets choosing to “pivot to video” as a strategy. result.
Those deals later disappeared after Facebook discovered the number of views such content received. The social network quickly launched live video and has since tweaked its algorithm to recommend less news content. It is estimated that hundreds of journalists have lost their jobs due to the media industry’s “pivot to video.”
The GNI program appears to be much smaller than Facebook’s attempt with live video nearly a decade ago, but it will bring new scrutiny to publishers’ use of generative AI tools. right.and other publications. It has been widely criticized for trying to disguise articles written by AI as if they were written by human staff.
