In December, Google launched its News AI pilot program, which licenses content from select publishers and uses it to test new AI features in Google News. On Thursday, the company announced that the program has added new partnerships, bringing the total number of publications in the pilot to more than 400 worldwide.
At launch, the program partnered with international publishers like The Guardian, El País, The Times of India, and The Washington Post. More publications are now coming on board, including CNN, The Financial Times, Axios, and Forbes.
As part of the expansion, the program has also added local news publishers across the U.S., including The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina; Oil City News in Casper, Wyoming; the Illinois- and Iowa-based newspaper chain Shaw Media; and the nonprofit newsroom The Texas Tribune.
“People’s information consumption habits are changing, and we want to make sure publishers of all sizes, local newsrooms included, can navigate these shifts,” Brianna Puccini Duff, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement to Nieman Lab.
Google declined to comment on the exact terms of the deals. However, Duff clarified that the News AI pilot does not operate on a “pay-per-value” model, meaning publishers are not compensated based on how much their content contributes to an AI-generated output. (The pay-per-value model is part of a parallel program that pays publishers for content surfaced in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, according to a recent report by Digiday.)
With the News AI pilot, publishers are instead paid to provide content that appears in experimental AI-powered features. That includes “story previews” — in-depth, AI-generated article summaries of recent stories that may show up on a publisher’s Google News page. Here’s a Washington Post example, with a disclaimer noting the copy is AI-generated and “may include mistakes.”
An AI-generated “story preview” on the Google News page for The Washington Post
Another test feature is “audio briefing,” a customizable, AI-generated podcast in the Google News app that stitches together daily headlines. Users can select the topics they’re most interested in hearing about, including “World,” “Gaming,” or “Sports” news. The feature includes citations that link to articles mentioned in the briefing.
