Google’s continuous generative AI drive seems to have taken a new leap as the global search engine company is now testing a product codenamed ‘Genesis‘ that uses artificial intelligence to produce news stories. The company has since pitched it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp, according to people familiar with the matter.
It isn’t clear exactly how this technology will differ from already existing artificial intelligence systems that have been used to generate articles, or from its AI chatbot Google Bard, but Google believes journalists could use it as some sort of an assistant to automate tasks and free them up for other things.
The persons, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the product, claimed that the tool, internally known by the working title Genesis, has the ability to take in information (such as specifics of current events) and produce news material, New York Times reports.
One of the three people familiar with the product said that Google believed it could serve as a kind of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks to free up time for others. They also said that the company saw it as responsible technology that could help steer the publishing industry away from the pitfalls of generative A.I.
Some executives who asked not to be named because it is a confidential matter, and who saw Google’s pitch described it as “unsettling”. Two people said it seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories.
Read also: Lawyer cites fake ChatGPT-generated cases in court, leaves court in utter disarray
What Google AI tool can mean for news reporting
There’s been significant ongoing concern that the use of AI for news reporting could fuel the spread of misinformation. AI systems and chatbots such as Google Bard have proven themselves much less adept at fact-checking than human journalists, and are prone to declaring incorrect information with conviction and authority.
This has already landed some AI systems such as ChatGPT in hot legal water.
Recall that earlier in May, we reported that a court in the U.S. was thrown into a bizarre situation when a lawyer brought before it false cases as precedents to support his argument in a case in New York. It turned out he had asked ChatGPT for examples of cases that supported the argument and ChatGPT, in its usual form, hallucinated wildly and invented several supporting cases out of thin air.
Also, a Georgia radio host sued ChatGPT for defamation last month, after it supplied an incorrect summary of a federal court case that wrongfully stated he had defrauded his employer and embezzled funds.
Earlier this month, Gizmodo’s io9 published a Star Wars piece full of errors attributed to the “Gizmodo Bot.” io9 deputy editor James Whitbrook said the website’s editorial team played no part in its publishing and hence was given no chance to edit it for corrections before it went out.
Apart from the numerous inefficiencies that define material provided by AI, there is also concern that it might replace jobs, particularly creative jobs. Of course, it’s also possible that the bosses of the aforementioned journalists view such technology less as a help for their employees and more as a replacement for them.
Jeff Jarvis, a journalist professor at the City University of New York, told The Times that journalists should use the tool “if this technology can deliver factual information reliably.” Since Google has yet to launch Genesis, we can’t say if it actually can, or if it could easily lead to the dissemination of misinformation.
Google has been moving quickly to deploy AI technology in an effort to catch up with the Microsoft-backed company OpenAI. Its generative AI tech, Bard, was caught spouting misinformation as soon as it debuted on Twitter.
Google will no doubt attempt to preempt similar issues in Genesis as factual errors would be of particular concern in an artificial intelligence system designed for journalism. No matter how sophisticated Google makes it, a journalism AI won’t be able to interview sources, experience events, or do any investigative reporting itself.
Even so, with news writers now commonly shackled to their computers to churn out multiple stories each day, it could be argued that most journalists aren’t getting the opportunity to do that anyway.
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