Google has just announced that users can say, “Tell me something good” to Google Assistant in order to get a raft of the day’s good news. Google said that it won’t be including things such as “unlikely animal friendships or random acts of kindness” but rather news about people making progress on real issues. The firm believes this is key to a balanced media diet.
Google explained in its blog post, the sort of information that users will be able to retrieve, it said:
“This is good news like how Georgia State University coupled empathy with data to double its graduation rate and eliminate achievement gaps between white and black students, how backyard beekeepers in East Detroit are bringing back the dwindling bee population while boosting the local economy, and how Iceland curbed teen drinking with nightly curfews and coupons for kids to enroll in extracurricular activities.”
The stories will come from a range of sources but will be retrieved from the Solutions Journalism Network which curates and summarizes the news. Google said it hopes that the stream of good news will be able to combat “negative news fatigue” and energize audiences. It also confirmed that it’s exploring how to incorporate more good news across the rest of the Google News platform.
“Tell me something good” is still characterized as an experimental project by Google and it reiterated that the project isn’t a magic solution but that it’s worth trying nonetheless. You can access the feature from any Assistant-enabled device, including your phone, Smart Display, or Google Home, as long as you’re in the U.S.