The deal between Google and California has initiatives like funding for artificial intelligence, and it has led to rising fears among journalists.
Google has reportedly signed a deal with the California lawmakers to provide millions of dollars to local newsrooms, as claimed in a Politico report. Clearly, the agreement has not gone down too well with journalists and Democratic lawmakers.
For those caught unaware, Google’s latest deal is just part of a series of global efforts, when countries like Australia and Canada have tech companies coming out in support of the journalism they profit from. It cannot go unnoticed that since a lot of readership has moved online, there’s been a decline in the overall media industry. With advertising dollars dipping, there’s been slashing of jobs globally.
Now with the deal, Google and the state of California aim to jointly contribute money to support local newsrooms, over the course of the next five years. However, the deal does not include broadcasters. The support would be provided with the help of “News Transformation Fund” at UC Berkeley’s journalism school.
With the latest funding, both Google and California aim to support artificial intelligence (AI) as well. However, it has led to fears in journalists who believe that their jobs could be replaced. On the other hand, Democratic legislators feel that Google has been using the deal to get on favourable terms with Sacramento.
Nonetheless, the California News Publishers Association has come out praising the deal and called it a “first step” in getting journalism to move towards a more sustainable business model. Meanwhile, journalist union Media Guild of the West, asserted that the latest would not make any changes to Google's power over newsrooms.
Coming back to the $250 million commitment over five years from Google and the state of California, it is believed that most of the monetary support would be for California newsroom, but an artificial intelligence “accelerator” would certainly be planned to support journalists’ work.
With the deal, the high-profile bill, dubbed the California Journalism Preservation Act by state assembly member Buffy Wicks, comes to an end. For those caught unaware, the bill would have led tech giants like Google and Meta to pay newsrooms to distribute their content online. A similar model was earlier implemented in Australia and Canada, but they have seen the business models collapse with the ongoing growth of the big tech platforms.
