According to Adweek.Googleis quietly working with some of thepublisheragreement to use new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to createNewsThe agreements are reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year. The partnership agreements, reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, appear to be part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), a six-year program that provides media literacy programs, fact-checking tools, and other resources to news organizations. However, the move involves generative AI content creation, which could be controversial.
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The program is currently aimed at a "handful" of small publishers, the report said, and the test tool would allow under-resourced publishers to create aggregated content more efficiently by indexing recently published stories from other outlets, such as government agencies and neighboring news outlets, and then summarizing them and publishing them as new articles.
It's not clear how much publishers will get paid for this partnership, but Adweek calls it a "five-figure" amount per year. In exchange, media organizations reportedly agree to use the tools for at least three articles per day, a weekly press release and a monthly marketing campaign.
Notably, publishers participating in the program do not appear to be required to disclose the fact that they are using AI, and sites whose content is being aggregated will not be told that their content is being used to create AI-written news stories on other sites. The AI-generated text will reportedly use a color-coding system to indicate the credibility of each part of the text, helping human editors review the content before publishing.
In a statement to Adweek, Google said they are in an "exploratory phase to provide AI tools that may help journalists in their work." The spokesperson added that these AI tools "are not intended to replace, nor can they replace, the important role journalists play in reporting, creating and verifying articles."
It's unclear what Google hopes to gain from the partnership, but IT House notes that this isn't the first tech company to pay news organizations to use its proprietary tools. The deal bears some similarities to the one Facebook struck with publishers in 2016 to create live video content. At the time, the social media giant paid millions of dollars to publishers in a bid to energize its nascent video platform.