The tech giant company, Google has partnered with some of the top news publishers and organisations to let people listen to curated, customised and long-form new stories. This feature will come on all Google Assistant-enabled smart home speakers.
Google has been working with many publishers over the past year that includes companies like Hollywood Reporter, CNBC, Washington Post and the South China Morning Post, to build a prototype that brings Artificial Intelligence of the Google News to voice context of Assistant.
"This new experience will bring you an audio news playlist assembled in 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.
With this feature, one can ask the Google Assistant to skip a story, go back and even stop.
This prototype is now open for news organisations that plan on participating. The feature relies on single-topic stories, which are segmented out from newscasts or shows to contribute to the audio news feed.
The effort is a part of Google News Initiative in which the Audio news on Google Assistant will roll out first to a limited number of people in the US, in English.
"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.
(With IANS inputs)
