Google is rolling out new artificial intelligence features aimed at assisting journalists with their reporting work. Through its Pinpoint tool for journalists, Google is launching a new capability that lets reporters query documents to quickly extract key points and summaries.
The AI-powered document analysis in Pinpoint uses natural language processing to allow reporters to ask questions about documents or collections of documents. The AI can then highlight and summarize the main ideas and themes present across the text, audio, video and image files.
For example, a journalist researching historical documents could use Pinpoint to get an AI-generated overview of the core concepts contained within that document set. The AI abstracts can point reporters to relevant sections as they seek to understand the key information and narratives.
In addition to the AI document summarization, Google is also adding a feature to Pinpoint that automatically extracts and combines structured data from multiple sources into a single spreadsheet view. This can save journalists tedious time manually transcribing similar data tables across different files.
As part of broader efforts to explore AI’s role in journalism, Google also announced new AI skills training lessons for reporters and publishing teams.
The company is further funding academic research examining how AI could help combat misinformation, strengthen quality information, and address harmful content online.
The new Pinpoint capabilities and journalist resources come as Google partners with news organizations globally to develop AI-powered tools to aid reporting and news gathering in the digital age.
Plus / Google’s Private Program Gives Publishers Early Access to Generative AI
According web sources, recently at the end of last month, Google has launched a private program that provides a handful of small independent publishers with beta access to an unreleased generative AI platform.
As part of the program, these publishers are expected to use Google’s AI tools to produce a fixed amount of content (3 articles per day, 1 newsletter per week, 1 marketing campaign per month) for a period of 12 months. In return, the publishers receive a monthly stipend amounting to a five-figure sum annually.
The AI platform allows these publishers to efficiently create articles by summarizing and rewriting content from other sources like government agencies and news outlets, without obtaining consent or notifying the original sources. The resulting AI-generated articles are marked with color codes indicating the potential accuracy of the text.
While Google claims these tools aim to help small publishers produce high-quality journalism from public data sources, there are concerns about plagiarizing others’ work without permission.
Critics argue this undermines the mission of supporting journalism and raises questions about Google’s broader initiatives like the Google News Initiative (GNI), which was intended to help publishers but has faced mixed reception.