Google launches suite of tech-powered tools for journalists

Google has said it is putting Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technologies into the hands of journalists.

The search engine company has therefore announced a suite of new tools, Journalist Studio, that will allow reporters to do their work more easily.

At launch, the suite includes a host of existing tools as well as two new products aimed at helping reporters search across large documents and visualizing data.

The first tool is called Pinpoint and is designed to help reporters work with large file sets - like those that contain hundreds of thousands of documents.

Pinpoint will work as an alternative to using the “Ctrl + F” function to manually seek out specific keywords in the documents, Techcrunch reported on its websites.

Instead, the tool takes advantage of Google Search and its AI-powered Knowledge Graph, along with optical character recognition and speech-to-text technologies.

It’s capable of sorting through scanned PDFs, images, handwritten notes and audio files to automatically identify the key people, organizations and locations that are mentioned. Pinpoint will highlight these terms and even their synonyms across the files for easy access to the key data

Because it’s also useful for speeding up research, Google notes Pinpoint can be used for shorter-term projects, as well - like Philippines-based Rappler’s examination of CIA reports from the 1970s or Mexicobased Verificado MX’s fast fact checking of the government’s daily pandemic updates.

Google has also partnered with The Center for Public Integrity, Document Cloud, Stanford University’s Big Local News program and The Washington Post to create shared public collections that are available to all users.

The second new tool introduced is The Common Knowledge Project, still in beta.

The tool allows journalists to explore, visualize and share data about important issues in their local communities by creating their own interactive charts using thousands of data points in a matter of minutes, the company says.