Google, the company behind Gemini, Pixel, and so many other wonderful products and services, is apparently paying news sites to start using its AI services to publish articles. The company has kicked off an experimental program that gives independent publishers access to the beta version of its AI that is capable of writing news articles.
Google isn’t trying to kill journalism, but it might end up happening one day
This is not the first time we have heard about this. Last year, Google was found testing “Genesis,” an AI tool that is capable of helping us journalists write news articles. Now, a new report suggests that the search engine giant has started paying five-figure amounts to small publishers so they can go ahead and try this generative AI tool for publishing.
It is also worth noting that this trial for Google’s AI project is currently on a small scale, but it does demand regular usage. As part of this deal, the company wants publishers to use this tool and publish three articles daily, one newsletter per week, and one monthly marketing campaign, and you guessed it right, it’s all done by AI.
The way Google’s platform works is that it pulls all the content from various websites and then puts it together on a dashboard. Then, it is presented to a human editor who can use AI tools to transform any new post on the dashboard into a news article. The last step involves the editor fine-tuning the article before it goes live.
In order to keep this deal relevant, news outlets are supposed to publish these AI-generated articles over a 12-month period and also provide analytics and feedback to Google. The source claims that this platform is currently available to a number of smaller outlets.
Another thing to note here is that at the time of writing, the websites that are using this tool do not have to tag these articles as AI-generated. In addition to that, websites that are getting their content aggregated are also not getting notified of the fact that Google’s tool is using their material to generate AI-based stories and articles.
Now, if this has gotten you worried, Google has talked to the source and reassured that it is not trying to destroy what we know as journalism. So, everyone who was holding their breath, AI is not coming for you… just yet.
News Source: Adweek