Google is testing a product for preparing news articles using AI – Kommersant

According to The New York Times (NYT), citing three people familiar with it, Google is testing a new product that “uses artificial intelligence (AI) to produce news articles” and is in talks with several major media outlets, including the NYT itself, The Washington Post and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

The novelty bears the working title Genesis, “it can process information, including messages about current events, and even generate news content.” NYT sources emphasize that the new product should not replace journalists, but become something like a personal assistant for them, “automating certain tasks to free up time for other tasks. The company sees this tool as a responsible technology that should stimulate the development of the publishing industry and protect it from the disadvantages of generative AI.”

Google officials commented on the NYT messages this way. “In partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we are in the early stages of exploring ideas for the potential development of AI tools to assist journalists in their work,” said Jenn Kreider, a Goole spokesperson. “To put it simply, such tools are not being made to—and they cannot be—replacing the key role of journalists in reporting, creating, and fact-checking storytelling. Such tools can, for example, provide options for headings or texts in different styles.”

In turn, representatives of News Corp said: “We are in excellent relations with Google and believe that the head of this company, Sundar Pichai, is committed to the development of journalism.”

The writers opposed the training of neural networks in their works, more on this in the material “AI denied books”.

Evgeniy Khvostik