Google is testing a new and innovative system Artificial intelligence which, according to many, could determine the death of journalism as we know it today.
The Mountain View giant, in fact, is paying huge sums to small publishers to test a new generative AI platform used for publishing news. According to what was stated by Adweek yesterday, the tests include the publication of three articles a daye one newsletter a week. The publication of content is followed by some feedback that publishers provide to Google.
To further describe the projects on the site Gizmodo was Meghann Farnsworth, spokesperson for Google. According to Farnsworth, this tool was specifically created to support small, local publishers by quickly processing content from public sources. Whether these are superficial declarations or not, for the spokeswoman these tools are not intended to replace the “essential role” of journalists.
Publishing news via AI: Google scares journalists
However, Google’s own operation, which with this project offers free content and pays the editorial staff to publish it, goes in the opposite direction to what was declared.
The new tested platform works by aggregating the contents of a list of websites proposed in a dashboard. With a simple clicka journalist can use the tool Gen AI to create new articles from a selected source. Human intervention, in this sense, is limited to making the article more understandable and easier to read. Among other things, as stated by Google, it will not even be necessary to report content produced by AI as such.
Simply put, this system appears to be replacing new journalists, substantially reducing the number of people working in this sector. On the other hand, it is not the first time that the combination of AI and journalism has created worrying situations: just think of the recent legal case involving the New York Times e OpenAI.