Introduction:
According to a recent New York Times piece, Google is Testing an AI Tool has begun marketing to the media and is piloting a tool that uses AI to generate news items. Owning The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post is News Corp., which also got AI technology from the internet behemoth.
The device, internally known as “Genesis,” can gather data and produce news content. According to reports, Google thinks the tool can act as a personal assistant for journalists by automating some duties so that more time can be spent on others. The tech behemoth views the tool as an example of “responsible technology.”
According to the New York Times, some executives presented with the tool found it “unsettling,” saying that it appeared to disdain the effort to produce factual news.
In a statement to TechCrunch, a Google representative stated, “In conjunction with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we’re in the early phases of investigating concepts to provide AI-enabled tools to help journalists with their work.
The representative said that “AI-enabled tools could help journalists with options for headlines or different writing styles.”We intend to provide journalists with the option of utilizing these emerging technologies to improve their work and productivity, just like we now do with tools like Gmail and Google Docs that are designed to be helpful to people. Simply put, these tools cannot take the place of the critical reporting, writing, and fact-checking that journalists do.
Google is Testing an AI Tool:
Google is Testing an AI Tool (Image Source: nytimes.com)
The report comes as several media outlets, such as NPR and Insider, have informed staff members that they plan to investigate how AI might be ethically employed in their newsrooms.
The Associated Press is one news company that has long employed AI to produce stories on topics like corporate earnings. However, these news stories only comprise a small portion of the organization’s total number of pieces that humans authored.
Google’s new tool may cause alarm because stories produced by AI that haven’t been rigorously reviewed or fact-checked have the potential to propagate false information.
In a strategy that ultimately backfired for the corporation, American media outlet CNET surreptitiously started employing generative AI to produce articles earlier this year. In the end, CNET had to correct more than half of the stories produced by AI. Some stories included factual mistakes, while others might have included copied content. An editor’s comment stating that “An earlier version of this article was assisted by an AI engine” can be found on the website’s articles. A staff writer has significantly revised this edition.
