Google eyes new licensing tie up with news outlets for its AI project

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is looking to tie up with news organizations for a new licensing project related to artificial intelligence, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The tech giant is planning to launch a pilot project with about 20 national news outlets for starters, one of the sources told Bloomberg.

“We’ve said that we’re exploring and experimenting with new types of partnerships and product experiences, but we aren’t sharing details about specific plans or conversations at this time,” a Google spokesperson reportedly said in a statement.

Google’s licensing project is tailored to specific products, another person familiar with the plan told Bloomberg. They didn’t share additional details of the program, such as possible terms.

Back in 2020, Google made a $1B investment for partnerships with news publishers and introduced “News Showcase,” aimed at benefitting both publishers and readers.

As of June 2023, more than 2,300 publications globally were part of “News Showcase” and the product had a presence in 22 countries, according to Google.

Earlier this year, Google signed a deal with The Associated Press to deliver “a feed of real-time information to help further enhance the usefulness of results displayed in the Gemini app.” Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed.

In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google’s AI Overviews and its AI tools like chatbots have drastically reduced traffic to news sites, causing publications to reconsider their business model and implement more job cuts.