Reporters looking over their shoulders at the automation of their jobs have a new concern: the advent of the robot-conducted interview.

Specifically, Swedish AI-generated writing firm United Robots says it’s already auto-interviewing sports coaches using an AI-driven computer program.

The instant-interview feature – known as its Q & A function – enhances auto-sports reporting software that United Robots has been using for years.

That code auto-writes stories on sports game results, using up-to-the-minute data provided by the game coaches.

“Almost all Swedish local news groups publish automatically generated post-match reports of all games in all divisions in all sports — using United Robots NLG (natural language generation) based sports robot,” United Robots reports on its blog.

“The new Q & A function adds a human element.

“After writing the match report, the robot sends relevant questions via text message to team coaches.

“The coaches’ quotes are automatically inserted into the articles published on the news publishers’ sites.”

Since 2018, United Robots has conducted automated interviews with 602 coaches using its Q&A feature.

All told, 6,272 quotes on game results have been mined from those interviews and published across approximately 30 Swedish news sites, according to the United Robots blog.

In other AI-generated writing news:

*AI in Public Relations: A Podcast Update: PR pro Jean Valin offers perspective on how artificial intelligence is changing public relations in this podcast.

The show is highly recommended by Kerry Sheehan, artificial intelligence in PR chair at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

“If you want to work in public relations and want to know more about the advent of artificial intelligence in the industry, this podcast interview with Jean Valin is a must-listen,” Sheehan observes.

*AI-Powered Reporters Wanted: What the New Job Descriptions Look Like: AI-driven news outlet Radar is publishing help wanted ads that could become increasingly prevalent in journalism: A call for a ‘data content writer’ — rather than a traditional journalist.

Sure, you’ll need proven writing skills, according to Radar’s ad.

But the UK-based AI-driven news service also wants you to be comfortable with numbers, know Microsoft Excel, possess data analytics skills and be comfortable working with data on a regular basis.

*AI-Generated Celebrity Gossip: An Inevitability?: Copywriter Barney Durrant says we may be headed for an age when celebrity gossip stories are regularly generated by AI robots.

Case in point: It’s not tough to imagine an AI-driven gossip service that captures a ‘celebrity sighting’ photo on social media and lifts news coverage of the image from traditional media, Durrant observes.

Once you’ve captured that basic story, it’s easy enough to scan the celebrity’s clothes to ID what he/she’s wearing — and add affiliate links to the photo that readers can click on to buy whatever their idol considers cool.

Plus, you can use AI to write the story using a writing style proven to get the most clicks on your Web site, Durrant observes.

“Now, I don’t assume this happens quite like that right now,” Durrant adds. “However, nothing I have just described is very hard to set-up and is certainly all technically possible.”

*Survey: How do You Use AI Tools in Public Relations?: Cropley Communications is seeking to survey PR pros on how they’re incorporating AI tools in their jobs.

Click here to participate.

The survey is a follow-up to Cropley’s ‘Getting Started in AI’guide, released late last year.

Essentially, the primer offers pro communicators an easy way to get up-to-speed on how to use AI in public relations.

“We’ve tried to make the playbook as actionable and helpful as possible for communication professionals,” observes Sia Papageorgiou.

She’s director, strategic communication, at Cropley Communication.

*New Spins on AI-Generated Writing: Besides generating basic stories from databases, AI-generated writing promises to enhance news coverage in other ways, according to Gil Sommer.

He’s vice president of product at Connatix, a video publishing platform.

“Through Natural Language Processing, AI tools can now understand an article’s context and auto-generate relevant content enhancements,” Sommer observes.

“Think micro-stories around the same theme — or more information about the central figure of the piece.”

Sommer also sees AI personalizing news the same way Netflix personalizes movie recommendations for each of its subscribers.

Plus, Sommer sees more news organizations using AI to sift through torrents of data to come up with new story perspectives and unseen trends.

*Pulizter Center Offering Funding for Innovative Data Journalism: The world-renowned organization is looking to bankroll journalists interested in using AI tools to spotlight under-reported stories.

“We’re seeking proposals that will employ cutting-edge data techniques, as well as embrace collaboration among newsrooms, whether that be across state lines or across national borders,” observes Steve Sapienza, a staffer at the Pulitzer.

“We encourage proposals that push the envelope in data collection and analysis and make use of advanced data mining techniques, such as machine learning, as well as spatial data analysis, satellite imagery, drones and sensors,” Sapienza adds.

Data journalism is an umbrella term for computerized visualizations and news stories generated from databases.

Data journalism is best known for visualizations – graphs, charts, infographics – generated from data.

But the form also includes AI-generated news stories wrested from computerized data.

News service Radar, for example, regularly produces thousands of news stories each month mined from British government databases.

Currently, the UK-based service is squired by six journalists, who create AI story templates that reach down into British databases to surface localized news stories.

Using the method, Radar was able to come up with hyper-localized stories like “Hackney: The home of bike theft in London” and “Figures reveal NHS spends millions prescribing gluten-free food for patients.”

*New Podcast on Datajournalism: Datajournalism.com, a valuable industry resource, is launching a new podcast.

The show promises to offer listeners an easy way to catch up on the latest in data journalism — along with the people who are shaping the technology.

*Two AI-Generated Writing Guides Featured on Must-Read List: Francesco Marconi’s forthcoming “Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism” has popped up on the BookAuthority’s must-read new journalism books for 2020.

Sharing the spotlight is “Data Journalism in the Global South.”

Marconi — who led implementations of AI at the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal — offers his perspective on how AI is recreating newsrooms across the world.

Meanwhile, “Data Journalism in the Global South” analyzes how journalists are using AI automation tools to uncover stories in countries like Chile, Argentina, the Philippines, South Africa and Iran.

*AI and Email Marketing: A Natural Fit: AI’s ability to personalize text, come-up with catchy headlines, produce marketing content and analyze the efficacy of content-driven campaigns make it a natural fit for email marketing, according to Rob FitzGerald, CEO, Connext Digital.

The move, FitzGerald observes, is to embrace the tech sooner, rather than later.

“Resisting its adoption means wasting an opportunity to edge-out your competitors and missing out on the many benefits it can bring to your business,” FitzGerald adds.

*Special Feature: Company Reports That Write Themselves

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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.