Google released Google-Extended, a tool that allows web publishers to decide whether their content will be used to improve Google's AI learning models.
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All About Google-Extended
Google is working towards transparency and control as the tech giant tries to find the balance between the publishers and the AI industry. "That's why we're committed to engaging with the web and AI communities to explore additional machine-readable approaches to choice and control for web publishers," Google said in a blog post.
Google-Extended is now available via robots.txt, a text file that notifies web crawlers whether they can access certain sites or not. The company cited that as AI application expands, the more complex it gets in managing its various uses.
Google uses crawlers and fetchers (user agents) to automatically scan websites. The Google Developers' site described Google-Extended as "a standalone product token that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products."
Battle Between AI and Publishers' Rights
2023 has been a hot year for the AI industry as publishers have been complaining and filing lawsuits due to copyright infringement. The year also was filled with various developments from big tech-companies who are continuously upgrading their systems with AI-generated tools.
Some news agencies such as The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and Medium have decided to block the web crawler from OpenAI. Prior to Google-Extended, Times have already updated their terms of service by banning companies to use any of their content for AI training.
Related Article: OpenAI's Web Crawler Has Been Blocked by The New York Times
