Google is working with news publishers to design a new AI-backed tool to help journalists report and write their stories, the company said.

The project was first reported by The New York Times, which is working with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in testing the new product.

Citing anonymous sources, the report said the tool – known internally as Genesis – was in an early testing stage, but impressive enough to be found "unsettling" by some of the news executives that saw its capabilities.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that "in partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we're in the earliest stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide AI-enabled tools to help their journalists with their work."

She added that "quite simply, these tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles."

The tool would function as a sort of co-pilot for reporters and editors by providing options for headlines or different writing styles, the company said. The Google project follows news of a tie-up between OpenAI and The Associated Press, in which the ChatGPT creator was given a license to use the archives of AP going back to 1985 to train AI.

"The arrangement sees OpenAI licensing part of AP's text archive, while AP will leverage OpenAI's technology and product expertise," the two organisations said in a joint statement last week.

The AP has used other forms of AI for nearly a decade, including automating corporate earnings reports and recapping some sporting events.

The emergence of ChatGPT last year caused great alarm in the news industry, with the app's ability to write convincingly and in seconds on complex topics from a simple prompt.

Threat to journalists?

The rapidly evolving technology is already raising concerns about whether it can be trusted to provide accurate reports, and whether it would eventually lead to human journalists losing their jobs in an industry that is already suffering financially.

In an ideal world, technology like Google is discussing can add important information to the world, said Kelly McBride, an expert in journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute.

It could document public meetings where there are no longer human journalists to attend and create narratives about what is going on, she said.

But there's a likelihood that the technology will progress faster than a new business model can be discovered that supports local news — creating the temptation to replace human journalists with AI tools, she said.

Journalism organisations need to consider the possibility that the technology, particularly in its nascent stages, may be responsible for creating errors — and the reputational damage may be more than any financial advantages its use can bring.

"I don't think there will be a single ethical explosion that will ruin everything," McBride said. "Instead, I think it's going to be more of an erosion of quality and a bunch of small things that erode confidence in the news media."

News organisations are at a critical moment where they can use things that technology companies need — like access to archived information — and create a financial structure that doesn't tilt too far in the direction of companies like Google, she said.

History isn't necessarily on their side.

"This is a whole new level of threat," she said, "and it's not like we can turn back."