Google has pitched several American newspapers, among them The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal — with an algorithm, known internally as Genesis, capable of writing news stories based on specific information.
Google describes Genesis as a personal assistant that by automating certain tasks, frees up time, and is a responsible use of the generative algorithm.
But senior staff at the papers who attended the presentation have been reported as expressing concerns, saying that the algorithm was overly casual about the amount of work and experience required to produce a news story. The industry is also worried about the impact of tools like Genesis on jobs
More and more companies are already using algorithms to produce content for pages in order to fill them with advertising. Much of the garbage published by the web’s worst offenders, Outbrain and Taboola, at the bottom of some media outlets’ pages are clearly produced by algorithms and automated templates. Whenever you find these obnoxious modules filled with the worst type of clickbait below the pages of a newspaper, you know for sure that its editor does not care much about the quality of the product…
Pitching large, prestigious news organizations with a product already used by spammers is only likely to further alienate journalists who cover technology news. That said, creating a generative algorithm trained with texts from a specific media outlet or a specific journalist is perfectly perfectly feasible. The question is whether we want automated algorithm setting the style and tone of a newspaper? Do prestigious publications really want to automate their processes in such a way that they risk becoming commoditized? Do we want anyone with access to Genesis to be able to replicate their product?
We all know that there are many ways to create a news story: from simply rewriting agency copy to researching, documenting, interviewing, fact checking to produce a well-rounded piece. Google seems to want the writing to be automated so that journalists can spend more time on the previous tasks, but it ignores a fundamental issue: in the creative process, the writing is precisely the moment to crystallize and give shape to all the previous work, and allowing that step of the process to be carried out by an algorithm is, in many ways, an anti-climax, potentially frustrating.
We’ll see how the media reacts. But frankly, I don’t think this has wings. At least I hope not.
UPDATE: Google have sent me the following addendum, which I reproduce in full:
“In cooperation with news publishers, especially smaller ones, we are in the early stages of exploring ideas for providing AI tools to help journalists in their work. These tools could help journalists with headline choices or different writing styles. Our goal is to offer profesional journalists the ability to use these emerging technologies to improve their work and productivity, in the same way that we make support tools available in Gmail and Google Docs. In short, these solutions are not intended to, and cannot, replace the fundamental role of journalists in reporting, creating and verifying their articles.
(En español, aquí)
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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