Google swears it’s not trying to kill journalism, but many of its latest projects seem geared toward that end. Google is paying five-figure sums to small publishers asking them to test out a generative AI platform geared toward newsrooms. News outlets are asked to publish three of these AI-assisted articles a day, in exchange for sending analytics and feedback to Google, according to a report from Adweek on Tuesday.
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“The experimental tool is being responsibly designed to help small, local publishers produce high quality journalism using factual content from public data sources,” said Google spokesperson Meghann Farnsworth in a statement to Gizmodo. Google emphasizes these tools are not intended to replace the “essential role journalists have.”
As the media industry is hammered by layoffs, struggling newsrooms would likely jump at Google’s offer. To reiterate, Google is paying newsrooms to supply them with free content. This is very …