According to three individuals familiar with the situation, Google is now developing a product that makes use of artificial intelligence technology to write news articles, and it is marketing the product to several news organisations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the owner of The Wall Street Journal, News Corp.
People who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the product stated that the software, which is currently being referred to inside the company as Genesis and has the working title Genesis, is able to produce news articles by taking in information such as the specifics of current events, for example.
Executives who were there at Google’s presentation felt it was disconcerting and asked not to be named since they were discussing a sensitive topic. According to the opinions of two individuals, it seemed to be dismissive of the work that went into generating factual and artistic news pieces.
The decision of whether or not to use technologies using artificial intelligence is now being debated by several news organisations located all over the globe. Many organisations, such as The Times, NPR, and Insider, have informed their staffs of their plans to investigate the possible applications of artificial intelligence in order to determine how it may be used ethically in the high-pressure field of news reporting, where every second counts and accuracy is of the utmost importance.
However, the new tool that Google has released will almost certainly cause writers who have been producing their own stories on their own for decades to feel anxious. Even while certain news organisations, such as The Associated Press, have been using artificial intelligence (AI) for quite some time to create stories on various topics, such as corporate earnings reports, these stories still only make up a tiny portion of the service’s overall content when compared to the pieces that are produced by journalists.
This might be altered by artificial intelligence, which would make it possible for users to produce articles on a larger scale. These articles, if not reviewed and vetted thoroughly, could result in the dissemination of false information and have an impact on how conventionally written tales are understood.
The advertising powerhouse, Google, has been moving at a dizzying rate to create and implement generative artificial intelligence; nevertheless, the technology has also brought significant hurdles to the company. Tools like Google’s chatbot, Bard, make factual claims that are occasionally wrong and do not lead visitors to sources that are more authoritative, such as news publishers. This is in contrast to the traditional function that Google has performed, which is to operate as a curator of knowledge and direct people to the websites of publishers so that they may read more.
The system was developed in response to demands from governments all around the globe directed at Google to distribute a bigger portion of its advertising money to news organisations. Following an attempt by the government of Australia to coerce Google into negotiating with publishers on payment terms in 2021, the firm expanded its News Showcase programme to include more partnerships with news organisations in a variety of countries.
authors and other content producers have previously criticised Google and other large A.I. corporations for exploiting decades’ worth of their articles and postings to assist in the training of these A.I. systems, without paying the authors. A number of media outlets, such as NBC News and The Times, have voiced their opposition to artificial intelligence programmes illegally accessing and using their data.
