With Google News Initiative, Google is building a stronger future for journalism. The Google News Initiative and Jigsaw hosted this session. David Dieudonn (lead Google News Lab France) & Patricia Georgiou (head of partnerships Jigsaw) discussed the role of artificial intelligence when it comes to publishing news.
David told with Google News Initiative; their objective is to help journalists with new ways to reach audiences, new ways to tell stories (example: Data Journalism) & leverage AI for journalism. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google wrote a blog post in June 2018 about “AI at Google: our principals” where he shared his view that AI should be socially beneficial. And David told with this principal Google News Initiative is integrating AI in the newsrooms.
In a study conducted by Reuters Institute & University of Oxford, 59% of the news industry is using AI to improve content recommendations & 35% are using AI to help journalists find stories (intelligent agents).
Google’s News Lab aims to make innovation accessible to all newsrooms around the world. As part of the Google News Initiative, News Lab works with journalists and entrepreneurs to help develop, drive and disseminate the latest tools in digital reporting.
Journalists can use the following Google AI tools/hacks to make their job easier:
(1) Cloud Natural Language API: Derive insights from unstructured text using Google machine learning. And to create long term value from archive content.
(2) Google Docs – Voice Typing: You can type and edit by speaking in Google Docs or Google Slides speaker notes.
(3) Google Translate API: Expanding the reach of local language news.
Patricia explained how to use AI to protect news and their audiences. She told her team of engineers, scientists, researchers, designers and policy experts at Jigsaw view the world through the lens of technology. She is building tools and techniques to protect journalists and newsrooms from online abuse, threat & attacks. Some of the tools are:
(1) Project Shield: A free DDoS protection service for news publishers, journalist and human rights activists.
(2) Perspective API: (https://www.perspectiveapi.com) Defense against online harassment/social media abuse.
(3) Outline VPN: Journalists need safe access to information to research issues, communicate with sources, and report the news. Outline lets news organizations easily provide their network with more reliable access to the open internet.
This session featured various examples from Newsrooms around the world.
More information about the session & recording is available at
https://www.journalismfestival.com/programme/2019/google-news-initiative-ai-in-the-newsroom
– Press release by Pratik Ghumade – volunteer press office IJF19
