Alexander Lewis 
Feb 28, 2024
Google is reportedly venturing into the realm of generative AI tools for publishing, striking discreet deals with select publishers, as reported by Adweek.
These agreements, rumoured to be valued in the tens of thousands of dollars annually, are said to be part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), an initiative launched six years ago to support media literacy endeavours, fact-checking utilities, and other newsroom resources. However, Google's foray into generative AI publishing tools marks a potentially controversial departure for the company.
According to Adweek, the program is presently targeting a small group of lesser-known publishers. The beta tools aim to assist resource-strapped publishers in efficiently curating aggregated content by indexing recent reports from various sources, including government agencies and neighbouring news outlets. Subsequently, these tools summarise and repurpose the content into new articles.
Read more: Google Chrome's Help Me Write feature — All about the AI-backed content composer
Details regarding the compensation for publishers remain somewhat opaque, although Adweek suggests a "five-figure sum" per year. In return, participating media entities purportedly commit to publishing a minimum of three articles daily, alongside a weekly newsletter and a monthly marketing campaign using AI tools.
Notably, publishers enrolled in the program are allegedly not obligated to disclose their use of AI, nor are the sources of the aggregated content informed about its repurposing into AI-generated stories. To aid human editors in reviewing the content pre-publication, the AI-generated text is reportedly colour-coded to indicate its reliability.
Google has yet to offer a comment on these developments. However, in a statement to Adweek, the company acknowledged that it is "exploring ideas" to potentially furnish journalists with AI-enabled tools to assist in their work. It emphasized that these tools are not designed to supplant the indispensable role of journalists in reporting, crafting, and fact-checking articles.
While the exact motivations behind Google's involvement in these agreements remain unclear, it echoes similar strategies adopted by other tech giants.
Notably, Facebook's past endeavours to remunerate publishers for using proprietary tools, such as live video content, eventually fizzled out due to misjudgments regarding viewership metrics. This latest move by Google under the GNI program is likely to reignite debates surrounding the ethical use of generative AI tools in publishing, reminiscent of past controversies where AI-authored content was mistakenly presented as human-generated.
