Google is paying small news outlets to use an AI article writing tool.
Under the agreement, publishers produce three articles a day, one newsletter a week and one marketing campaign a month using AI. In exchange, outlets get “a five-figure sum” over the course of 12 months.
First off, that figure seems like a steal for Google. And the service relies on articles from other publishers — who reportedly haven’t consented to their work being used:
To produce articles, publishers first compile a list of external websites that regularly produce news and reports relevant to their readership. ...
When any of these indexed websites produce a new article ... the publisher can then apply the gen AI tool to summarize the article, altering the language and style of the report to read like a news story.
