New Zealand's biggest publisher of news this week joined big global names in blocking Open AI from using its content to power generative artificial intelligence tool Chat GPT. Stuff says it is being harvested without permission for AI products already turning out low-quality results. Mediawatch asks Stuff's if keeping Ai at arm's length is a good move.

New Zealand's biggest publisher of news this week joined big global names in blocking Open AI from using its content to power generative artificial intelligence tool Chat GPT. Stuff says it is being harvested without permission for AI products already turning out low-quality results. Mediawatch asks Stuff if keeping AI at arm's length is a good move.

"It's not that we're stealing your content. We want to just be a neutral librarian helping you find the right book - but not not having written in the book," Google's chief technology advocate Michael Jones told Mediawatch in 2012.

Back then, Google itself was only eight years old, but already news publishers were worried about how many people were finding their news through it.

Critics complained its online search had created a 'walled garden' around the online content it had indexed so well.

"I cannot imagine us saying; 'Get the news from Google - and we'll tell you what the news was'. It feels very awkward," said Jones at Project evolution, a conference at AUT all about the growing impact of online digital technology and social media.

Jones died two years ago, shortly before the launch of the first generative AI applications. And among those which are creating a version of the news for users is Google's own AI service Bard.

Last month, the New York Times reported Google was testing an AI tool called Genesis, which uses AI technology to write news articles. Google reportedly pitched this to US news outlets as an aid for journalists, rather than a replacement for them.

Earlier this month at another Auckland University of Technology event - the AI + Communications Symposium - former journalist and PR strategist Catherine Arrow warned Google's walled garden could become something much more restricted.

"Search engines created a walled garden where we can pick and choose what they've decided are the best blooms. As we get into search generative experience (SGE), we find ourselves only shown the flowers that they decide that we can look at. There's a real danger there," she said.

AI services like Google's Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat and Open AI's ChatGPT respond to simple prompts from users and then summarise information scraped from the internet - including news produced in the first place by publishers. …

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