Google pays publishers thousands of dollars to use its AI to write articles - media outlet

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Google is quietly making deals with a number of publishers to use generative artificial intelligence tools to create stories. The experiment is likely being launched as part of the Google News Initiative (GNI).

Here's What We Know

According to Adweek, we're talking about a "handful" of small media outlets that receive an annual payment of tens of thousands of dollars from Google for using AI to aggregate and publish news content. Specifically, the publications commit to a minimum of three stories per day, one weekly newsletter and one monthly marketing campaign using these tools.

Google says it is in the early stages of exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to support journalism. AI tools cannot replace the key role of journalists in reporting and fact-checking, the company said.

Previously, the use of technology to "clone" content has been criticised by experts. In 2016, Facebook allocated millions of dollars to publishers to create videos using its tools, but later recognised the fallacy of such a strategy.

Moreover, according to some estimates, the media industry's "pivot to video" has cost hundreds of journalists their jobs.

In addition, publications like CNET and Sports Illustrated have previously been widely criticised for trying to pass off AI articles as human-written content.

Source: Engadget