Google TV’s upcoming News Briefs might also have a screensaver mode

Just last month, we reported on a Google TV experiment that was set to bring News Briefs to your home screen. And while this is still in testing and hasn’t launched to the public quite yet, it appears that Google may already have a different version of the feature in the works than what it announced weeks ago.

The folks at Android Authority have dug through the latest release of the Google TV Ambient Mode app, version 3.1.0.721404302, and found strings of code that give us clues about what to expect when it comes to the News Brief feature. And there’s a good chance that it may just be a part of Ambient Mode.

Google TV could be going through some changes

In Google’s announcement, it mentioned that the News Brief feature would be coming to the For You tab — a sensible addition considering the nature of this menu. However, this new evidence suggests that the feature might also appear in some form on your screensaver.

According to the code found, News Brief could show headlines in Ambient Mode that would be “AI-generated based on the day’s top news articles.” You could then “Press OK to listen to your news brief.”

What’s great about this is that you would be able to get the day’s top news while you weren’t really using your Google TV. Of course, some will be concerned about this invading their Google TV experience — perhaps obscuring those Google Photos albums shown in Ambient Mode in a way that the current weather overlay doesn’t — and while there is a way to turn this off in the code, it’s still unclear whether any of this will be implemented.

Of course, since this is just being read in code, there’s a chance that none of this will come to fruition as well. Regardless, it’s interesting to see Google play with the feature and make changes prior to its formal release. While most would like to keep their Google TV menus as clean as possible, having the ability to catch up on all the news in a day in an instant could be highly beneficial.

As Google TV continues to mature, perhaps the most alarming addition is the increase in ads over the past year. We even recently reported that Google TV was showing ads for ads now. While we’d love to think that Google will exercise some caution with News Briefs, there’s a good chance that it won’t, and the experience will become more of what we don’t want.