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Google has been quietly striking deals with some publishers to use new generative AI tools to publish stories, according to <\/a> in Adweek<\/em>. The deals, reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, are apparently part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), a six-year-old program that funds <\/a>, <\/a>, and other resources for newsrooms. But the move into generative AI publishing tools would be a new, and likely controversial, step for the company.<\/p>\n According to Adweek<\/em>, the program is currently targeting a \u201chandful\u201d of smaller publishers. \u201cThe beta tools let under-resourced publishers create aggregated content more efficiently by indexing recently published reports generated by other organizations, like government agencies and neighboring news outlets, and then summarizing and publishing them as a new article,\u201d Adweek reports.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear exactly how much publishers are being paid under the arrangement, though Adweek<\/em> says it\u2019s a \u201cfive-figure sum\u201d per year. In exchange, media organizations reportedly agree to publish at least three articles a day, one weekly newsletter and one monthly marketing campaign using the tools.<\/p>\n Of note, publishers in the program are apparently not required to disclose their use of AI, nor are the aggregated websites informed that their content is being used to create AI-written stories on other sites. The AI-generated copy reportedly uses a color-coded system to indicate the reliability of each section of text to help human editors review the content before publishing.<\/p>\n Google didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to Adweek <\/em>the company said it was \u201cin the early stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide AI-enabled tools to help journalists with their work.\u201d The spokesperson added that the AI tools \u201care not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear what Google is getting out of the arrangement, though it wouldn\u2019t be the first tech company to pay newsrooms to use proprietary tools. The arrangement bears some similarities to the deals Facebook once struck with publishers to create live video content in 2016. The social media company made headlines as it paid publishers<\/a>to juice its nascent video platform and dozens of media outlets opted to \u201cpivot to video\u201d as a result.<\/p>\n Those deals later evaporated after Facebook discovered it had <\/a> the number of views such content was getting. The social network <\/a> its live video deals soon after and has since tweaked its algorithm to recommend less news content. The media industry\u2019s \u201cpivot to video\u201d cost hundreds of journalists their jobs, <\/a> estimates.<\/p>\n While the GNI program appears to be much smaller than what Facebook attempted nearly a decade ago with live video, it will likely raise fresh scrutiny over the use of generative AI tools by publishers. Publications like <\/a> and <\/em><\/a> have been widely criticized for attempting to pass off AI-authored articles as written by human staffers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n