Google wants artificial intelligence to choose your news

The newly relaunched news curation service will use "a new set of AI techniques to take a constant flow of information as it hits the web, analyze it in real time and organize it into storylines," Google News lead Trystan Upstill wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "This approach means Google News understands the people, places and things involved in a story as it evolves, and connects how they relate to one another," he wrote. Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies are all vying to become the leading digital news platform, and all use AI to curate content. But Google says the new Google News will go even further than others in harnessing the power of machine learning. In the wake of the rise of fake news spread by platforms like Facebook during the 2016 election and general fears about social media's effects on the way people consume news and information, there is likely to be intense scrutiny on how Google's AI performs.