The occurrences of depressing news stories is a way of life we surely want to avoid. Google too feels the same way and has made efforts to empower its tech solutions towards the same. Its voice-based Google Assistant will now dole out feel-good stories that will make you feel good and positive all around you.
How does it work?
Google Assistant users will have to request ‘Ok Google, tell me something good’ to get their daily dose of motivating stories that look on the bright side of life. The stories are curated from Solutions Journalism Network, a US-based non-partisan organisation that collects uplifting and feel-good news from across the globe. The not-for-profit organisation helps train journalists on enabling better coverage of how people are responding to problems and how their efforts are leading to motivating results.
The results link to stories that come from diverse media sources like NY Times and BBC. The tech giant maintains that the organisation is a great fit to get started as it empowers and energises journalism and thus, helps to tackle negative news fatigue.
When you say “Hey Google, Tell Me Something Good”, you get a stream of good news like how more volume of voluntary health information is aiding research on Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s or how Utah managed to reduce its homelessness by 91 per cent.
Why the need for this move?
Talking about the new feature, the Creative producer of Google Creative Lab, Ryan Burke said that the users need to have a well-balanced media consumption diet. But currently, the scale is heavily skewed towards bad happenings and depressing news stories. The need of the hour was to rectify this skew and have users get some good stories as well that help inspire and motivate people all over the world. This is how the feature of receiving daily good news wad conceptualised and implemented. This new feature comes on the heels of steady expansion of voice-tech device range offered by Google.
From another angle, it may also have some positive impact. Psychologists are of the opinion that such uplifting news stories would have a great effect on mental health, bring down stress, and reduce anxiety in some cases. They commented that there is a better scope for improvement in case the readers come to know about the emotional angle of the stories they present.
Try it out now
Currently, the service is in a trial but may be expected to reach Google Home devices soon. Even phones that have this technology (for example Android phones) will be able to use this new roll-out.
Check out the official Google announcement here.
