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Right now, many people fear the march of generative AI technology becoming more powerful. It proves to be a major threat to the journalism industry, and Google’s new tool only strengthens our fear of it. Google was testing a tool called Genesis via a new program, and this tool allows people to generate news articles using AI.
Speaking of AI technology, Google’s CEO has finally spoken out about the recent drama with Gemini’s image generator. Gemini has been generating pictures inaccurately depicting people’s race and gender. He said that this is “completely unacceptable.” He also stated that the company is making progress to fix it.
Google is testing Genesis via a new program
According to reports, Google is in the process of training Genesis for a public release. As such, the company is contacting news outlets to potentially use the tool. At this point, we’re not certain which outlets the company contacted. However, we know that it’s focusing on smaller publications.
In order to use the tool, publications have to agree to a minimum number of articles being posted. Google wants the publications to post at least three news articles a day using the AI tool. Also, they need to post at least one newsletter and one marketing campaign every month using the AI tool. That’s definitely a doable task.
Google isn’t just asking favors here, as the company is offering money to these companies to use the tool. We don’t know the specific amounts. However, reports say that Google is offering five-figure sums. So, the company is paying publications between $10,000 and $99,999. We’re pretty sure that the publications will receive this money over the course of the agreed-upon 12-month period.
At this point, there’s still a lot of information that we don’t know. Since this is a platform dedicated to making news articles, we can expect it to be optimized for news. It will do a better job than if a person simply went to ChatGPT or Gemini and asked it to write an article. Also, Google says that the articles will still need human intervention. So, it will still need to be a human Editor to make sure that everything is in check.
Regardless, there are still some issues with this
Firstly, Google says that the Genesis program does not want to replace human journalists. However, it’s blatantly obvious that this tool gives publications more reason to forgo human workers. Articles can be produced quickly with very little effort. So, why hire human writers when articles can be produced at lightning speed?
Also, the company is targeting smaller news publications, which will present a major barrier to entry for potential journalists. Smaller news publications are where many journalists get their start. Well, if you are a smaller news company, and you’re not quite pulling in the big bucks like The Verge or CNET, the last thing you’re focusing on is hiring full-time journalists.
Providing smaller news organizations with AI tools that eliminate the need for human writers could make it less likely that potential journalists will be able to get their start there. However, that’s only speculation at this point.
Right now, we don’t know the potential risks of this tool. So, we are just going to have to wait and see what happens.
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