USA: The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing three sources close to the situation, that Google is testing an AI-powered journalism product and pitching it to significant news organizations. Google allegedly contacted The Times among other media organizations.

The tool, internally referred to as Genesis, can produce news stories based on user inputs, such as the who, what, where, and when of current events, according to the sources. According to reports, the company views it as "responsible technology" that offers news organizations a compromise if they don't want to replace their human staff with generative AI. 

Along with the creep factor—two executives who reportedly saw Google's pitch described it as "unsettling"—Genesis' automated approach to storytelling irritated some journalists. It appears to take for granted the skill needed to produce news stories that are not only accurate but also well-written, according to two insiders who spoke with the Times.

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Genesis was "not intended to... replace the essential role that journalists have in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their articles," a Google spokeswoman insisted, but it could provide options for headlines and other writing styles. 

According to one source, Google actually saw Genesis as more of a "personal assistant for journalists," capable of automating mundane tasks so the writer could concentrate on more difficult ones like conducting in-depth interviews and reporting from the field.

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The revelation that Google was developing a "ChatGPT for journalism" sparked widespread worry that Genesis might unleash a flood of false information. Following its debut earlier this year, Google's AI chatbot Bard quickly gained a reputation for conjuring up intricate lies and presenting them as fact. CEO Sundar Pichai has acknowledged that while these "hallucinations" appear to be common among AI large language models, nobody is exactly sure what causes them or how to keep an AI honest. 

Even worse, radio editor Gabe Rosenberg tweeted in response to the New York Times article, "Genesis could marginalize real news if Google encourages its adoption by modifying its search algorithms to prioritize AI-generated content." 

With less than stellar results, a few reputable news organizations have experimented with implementing AI in the newsroom. Despite promising its writers that their jobs would be secure in January, BuzzFeed went from using AI to create customized quizzes to producing dozens of formulaic travel articles to announcing that all content would be AI-generated in less than six months. 

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In an effort to artificially boost their search engine rankings, CNET was caught earlier this year passing off articles written by AI as articles written by real people. 

Despite these mishaps, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has recently started partnering with significant news organizations like the Associated Press to promote the adoption of the technology in the newsroom.