Home Artificial Intelligence Google is testing an AI tool that may write news articles

Google is testing an AI tool that may write news articles

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Google is testing an AI tool that may write news articles

Google is testing a tool that uses AI to jot down news stories and has began pitching it to publications, in accordance with a latest report from The Recent York Times. The tech giant has pitched the AI tool to The Recent York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp.

The tool, internally codenamed “Genesis,” can soak up information and after which generate news copy. Google reportedly believes that the tool can function a private assistant for journalists by automating some tasks in an effort to release time for others. The tech giant sees the tool as a type of “responsible technology.”

The Recent York Times reports that some executives who were pitched on the tool saw it as “unsettling,” noting that it looked as if it would disregard the trouble that went into producing accurate news stories.

“In partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we’re within the earliest stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide AI-enabled tools to assist journalists with their work,” a Google spokesperson said in an announcement to TechCrunch.

“As an example, AI-enabled tools could assist journalists with options for headlines or different writing styles,” the spokesperson added. “Our goal is to offer journalists the alternative of using these emerging technologies in a way that enhances their work and productivity, identical to we’re making assistive tools available for people in Gmail and in Google Docs. Quite simply these tools will not be intended to, and can’t, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their articles.”

The report comes as several news organizations, including NPR and Insider, have notified employees that they intend to explore how AI could responsibly be utilized in their newsrooms.

Some news organizations, including The Associated Press, have long used AI to generate stories for things like corporate earnings, but these news stories represent a small fraction of the organization’s articles overall, that are written by journalists.

Google’s latest tool will likely spur anxiety, as AI-generated articles that aren’t fact-checked or throughly-edited have the potential to spread misinformation.

Earlier this 12 months, American media website CNET quietly began producing articles using generative AI, in a move that ended up backfiring for the corporate. CNET ended up having to issue corrections on greater than half of the articles generated by AI. A number of the articles contained factual errors, while others could have contained plagiarized material. A number of the website’s articles now have an editor’s note reading, “An earlier version of this text was assisted by an AI engine. This version has been substantially updated by a staff author.”

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