Robots are after my job, AP Articles being written by an algorithm (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by Theresa , Sunday, February 01, 2015, 04:52

Robots are after my job. They’re after yours as well, but let us deal with my problem first. Associated Press, an American multinational nonprofit news agency, revealed on Friday that it published 3,000 articles in the last three months of 2014. The company could previously only publish 300 stories. It didn’t hire more journalists, neither did its existing headcount start writing more, but the actual reason behind this exponential growth is technology. All those stories were written by an algorithm.

Last summer the publication partnered with Automated Insights -- a US-based company that provides real-time content automation services to "transform data into narratives, visualizations and applications" -- to begin automating quarterly earnings reports using the software company’s patented Wordsmith platform. The algorithm is churning out business reports -- something which requires a human to have a scrupulous understanding of the market, drink a lot of latte, and be damn accurate and quick -- at an incredible pace.

The articles produced by the algorithm were accurate, and you won’t be able to separate them from stories written by humans. Good lord, all the stories were written in accordance with the AP Style Guide, something not all journalists follow (but arguably, should).

This isn’t the first time a program has attempted (and succeeded) at writing news stories, either. Last year, an LA Times writer-bot "reported" a snippet about an earthquake just three minutes after the event. No wonder the publication claimed that it was the first to report the story.

FULL STORY