Google appears to be paying a five-figure sum to a few independent news websites to publish AI-generated articles. The tech behemoth is allegedly doing so to test and improve an unreleased AI model. According to a recent AdWeek report, Google has reached an agreement with some publishers to post AI-generated content for 12 months. In exchange, the publications will receive a monthly payment totaling five figures per year.

The tech behemoth appears to be providing these publications with tools to create content. According to Adweek, the offer is part of the Google News Initiative and is intended to help small publications create 'aggregated content' using data from other sources such as government agencies and local news outlets.

However, these publishers who signed the deal will have to “compile a list of external websites that regularly produce news and reports relevant to their readership.” The report also states that external publications are not asked for their consent their data is scraped and are not notified about the same.

While Google does not require publishers to identify these articles as AI-generated, they must publish three articles per day, one newsletter per week, and a marketing campaign each week.

The tool's dashboard supposedly allows users to receive an AI-generated summary of a news story from these external websites, which can then be edited or published after being reviewed by a human editor. According to 9to5Google, Google partially confirmed the report but denied that its AI tools would use information from other sources. The new tool was launched earlier this month, but we don't know which publications are using it right now.