Google is secretly showing off an AI tool that can produce news stories to major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. The tool, dubbed Genesis, can digest public information and generate news content, according to reporting by the New York Times, in yet another sign that AI-generated — or at least AI-facilitated — content is about to flood the internet. Google is stridently denying that the tool is meant to replace journalists, saying it will instead serve as a “kind of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks to free up time for others.” Media executives, however, were taken aback, describing the tech giant’s pitch as unsettling, telling the NYT that it “seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories.” Other publications have dived headfirst into using AI to generate news stories, with news including CNET, Gizmodo, and BuzzFeed publishing AI-generated articles that often turned out to be rife with errors and plagiarism. Journalists were appalled at the news. “Goodness gracious,” tweeted The Information founder Jessica Lessin. “Let it be said, journalists don’t need Google to write their articles as ‘a personal assistant.’ And anything that Google (or any AI) could write has no real original reporting value.” “This could be incredibly dangerous for journalism as a business,” tweeted Kansas City-based radio editor Gabe Rosenberg,” especially if Google acts to juice its own search results to prioritize AI content.” “And worse yet is what…Google Secretly Showing Newspapers an AI-Powered News Generator