Who knows? This report just might be computer-created. (unsplash.com)
People receive news from numerous different sources on a daily basis, as newspapers like The New York Times or The Guardian are major providers of information on a variety of news. Since 2014, some of the articles delivered by these media outlets may be computer-generated, as some of these newspapers have been developing technology that covers news and eases the human workload.
In the past year, several news sources, such as The Washington Post, have rapidly developed the capabilities of their automated reporting technology. The Washington Post utilizes a program known as Heliograf, which takes in raw data and spits out a comprehensible story and starts the process of developing an article by first analyzing the data. Heliograf then finds a template that matches the topic of the news and simply fills any holes using the processed data.
The Post first put Heliograf to work during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and produced more than 300 short updates on the results of competitions. Afterwards, Heliograf was used to provide information on each House, Senate and gubernatorial race through the United States on Election Day. Heliograf supported The Post‘s political team of 60 reporters by covering around 500 contests.
Besides just helping with covering less complex topics, Heliograf also helps the journalists with accuracy and time-management. When analyzing the raw data received, Heliograf can go back and check its analysis before filling the data into the template. Furthermore, Heliograf informed reporters of any unexpected trends on Election Day so they could cover the news ahead of time.
The Post’s Heliograf is just one example of a news outlet harnessing the developing power of AI. USA Today uses its program, dubbed Wibbitz, to create videos narrated by a synthesized voice. NewsTracer, a program made under Reuter, searches Twitter and uses the number of people tweeting about a topic to determine its validity.
These news-generating programs are still being advanced, Heliograf being only one of them. The Post is trying to change Heliograf so its writers can input data and analysis into the program, so Heliograf produces an article, instead of the other way around. With these recent advances in mind, bots that cover news are not going away anytime soon and their influence will only continue to grow.
