Google Assistant to now support AI-drive audio news feed for certain publishers

Google has partnered with some of the top news organisations and publishers to let people listen to curated, customised and long-form news stories via its Google Assistant-enabled smart home speakers. Over the past year, the tech giant worked with publishers including CNBC, Hollywood Reporter, Washington Post and The South China Morning Post, building a prototype that brings the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of Google News to the voice context of the Assistant. [caption id=“attachment_5351661” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Google Assistant on the Pixel 3 XL. Image: tech2[/caption] “This new experience will bring you an audio news playlist assembled at that moment, for you. It starts with a briefing of top stories and updates on topics you care about, and extends into longer-form content that dives deeper into more stories,” Google said in a statement late Thursday. You can ask Google Assistant to skip a story, go back or stop. The prototype is now open for news organisations that would like to participate. It relies on single-topic stories — segmented out from newscasts or shows — to contribute to the audio news feed. Audio news on Google Assistant will roll out first to a limited number of people in the US in English. The effort is part of the Google News Initiative.

“Publishers from around the world who produce English-language content are welcome to submit feeds for inclusion and sign up to try the experience,” Google informed. To help with this, the Google News Initiative provided funding to a number of news organisations, such as KQED and McClatchy, to support building out more audio capabilities for the industry as a whole.