The dawn of robotic journalism
Four of the most famous media outlets in the world are now using AI journalism systems to write some of their articles in an automated fashion. These four outlets consist of Bloomberg, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
The emergence of robotic journalism recieves praise as a new modernizing facility, but also as a new threat to journalists. As reporters and in-house editors are often the victims of layoffs in both traditional and digital media for reasons of increasing competition in the media market and cuts in operating costs,.
About one third of Bloomberg News’ content derives from some sort of automated technology, according to the New York Times. The agency uses the Cyborg system, which helps reporters produce thousands of articles about companies’ quarterly financial results.
This Artificial Intelligence writing assistant functions as following. It “reads” companies’ public announcements once they’re made and automatically produces a text including the most important features. The field is becoming more and more difficult to get the word out. AI “reportage”, thus, will help Bloomberg compete with its main competitor, Reuters. In addition to this being a great boom for the company’s financial journalism wing. It also helps compete with some hedge funds that are now using AI reporters to deliver news to their clients.
At the Associated Press, robotic reporters, in addition to business news, produce articles on the baseball leagues. The agency has been a pioneer, having already been in a an agreement with technology company Automated Insights since 2014. This company specializes in developing text generation software. Since the partnership, the Associated Press has increased from 300 to 3,700 produced articles on companies’ financial results each quarter.
In Washington Post, robotic systems write about the high school football championship. Meanwhile at the Los Angeles Times they write about earthquakes. The Post uses its own Heliograf robotic system. This system proved its usefulness in covering the 2016 Olympics and the U.S. election. Last week, the Australian edition of the Guardian published its first article to come out of a machine in its entirety: it was a presentation of annual donations to the country’s political parties. Forbes recently announced that it was testing the new Bertie tool that provides editors with ready-made drafts of articles.
Media executives argue that artificial intelligence is not a threat to human journalists. Instead it will help them get rid of routine work and focus on more meaningful things, thus becoming more creative. For example, thanks to the artificial intelligence they are using, Bloomberg, the Associated Press and the Washington Post now have systems for early internal alerts to their editors in case some data (e.g. record-breaking performances of athletes in competitions) go out of the ordinary, so a regular journalist can take on the task of writing something more detailed and enriching.
But robotic articles are not always infallible, and in-house editors often have to feed the “smart” system with the right information so that it can write reliably – something that requires journalists to take the time to “train” the system.
The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with artificial intelligence technology that will help them create clean, updated transcripts of interviewees, or filter unreliable news on the fly. For now, New York Times doesn’t plan to automate article production, but they are experimenting with AI to create personalized newsletters and track digital photos.
While the immediate substitution of human journalists by robots is not on the horizon, in the coming years, editors will most likely have to work more closely with “smart” machines.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
