In a glimpse of what could become the future of customer service, Amazon is currently testing a chatbot powered by AI-generated writing.
Essentially, the tech is being trained to respond to customer inquiries with on-the-fly text responses.
Ideally, the system will bring chatbots to the next level, enabling them to engage in creative conversations with customers.
That would be a welcome change to conventional chatbots, which spit out rote answers that are too often off-the-mark.
So far, Amazon has limited testing of its new AI chatbot to interactions with Amazon staff, rather than customers.
For full details, check-out Amazon’s academic paper on the new technology.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*Robot Rock: AI-Powered Robot Launches Music Tour: If you’re craving some original tunes with a decidedly silicon flair, singer / songwriter Shimon the robot is your ticket.
The so-wired personnna – who composes his own lyrics using AI-generated writing — is going on tour to promote his new album.
And he already has a choice cut you can listen to on YouTube.
The crooner, who is often backed-up by human musicians, was created by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Full disclosure: Georgia Tech’s researchers did help Shimon set his lyrics to music.
Rock on Shimon.
Bleep bloop.
*Facebook’s AI Poised To Write Better Ads Than Copywriters: It’s only a matter of time until Facebook’s AI will be churning out better ad copy than mere humans, according to Paul Getter, CEO, The Internet Marketing Nerds.
“We’re pretty much there,” Getter observes wryly. “Every year, SkyNet is getting closer to self-awareness. But it looks like instead of launching the nukes at us, they’re going to do something even more amazing — write ads.”
Getter’s reasoning: AI advertising bots will be able to best human writers by having intimate knowledge of readers — based on Facebook data collected on consumer behavior, likes, dislikes and the rest.
That should result in ad conversions that can’t be beat, according to Getter.
“I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords,” Getter adds. “Their advent into the world of digital marketing isn’t the apocalypse for online advertisers.
“It’s actually an open door to a new world of opportunities for the advertisers who adapt quickly and leverage the latest tech to get the most competitive edge with their ad copy.”
*Future Shock: Prepare for AI to Be The Web’s Number One Author: While AI-generated writing insiders often downplay its potential impact on writers’ jobs, Mayur Bhatt is not among them.
“It is only a matter of time before algorithms are able to write articles on any topic and for any target group,” observes Bhatt, marketing head at SEO Services Guru.
“AI will probably even be able to produce excellent content at an enormous speed in the future.
“This makes it easier to individualize and personalize texts, so that all essential information about a reader flows in and affects the written and adapted text.
“AI gets to know the readers very well and can use all information about the recipient, so that each piece of content is individual.
“Just imagine what content arises when an AI can easily read your complete (public) Facebook profile and use this information for suitable content.”
*Now, AI is a Writing Teacher, Too: Virginia-based Orange County High School is using artificial intelligence to help grade student essays, according to writer Hilary Holladay.
Under the system, each student essay is graded by the AI software — as well as a human teacher.
There’s also a failsafe: If a human teacher disagrees markedly with the AI software’s grade, another human teacher is brought in to help make the final call.
Observes John Floyd, whose daughter attends the high school: “As a parent, I can acknowledge that machine grading could bring one advantage to the process of evaluating students’ writing: namely, consistency.”
Even so, Floyd adds that the concept of AI software grading an essay makes him “very uncomfortable.”
*AI-Generated Copy Writing: A New Guide From a Key Player: Perry Malm, CEO of Phrasee, has a new book out detailing the rise of AI-generated copywriting.
A pioneer in the tech who brought his brand of AI-generated copywriting services to major firms like Domino’s, EBay and Groupon, Malm offers readers an insider’s view on the increasing proliferation of automated writing.
In essence, the book – “The Language Effect: Why AI-powered copywriting is a marketer’s (new) best friend,” – makes the case for “why using AI technology to make copy better is the only scalable and sustainable way to produce the volume and quality of copy,” Malm says.
*AI in the Newsroom: A Representative Sampling: Writer Khurram Shahzad offers a fresh look at five major news-outlets using AI-generated writing: The New York Times, the BBC, the Washington Post, Yahoo! and the Associated Press.
He also took AI-generated writing for a test-drive.
“I was able to produce a 550-word article — based on a press release — with a single click,” Shahzad observes. “Amazingly, this article had many relevant references from the past.
“It was hard to say that it was a machine-written article.”
*AI’s Impact on Translation Jobs: Prognosis Mixed: While translations powered by artificial intelligence are commonplace these days, most translation – especially involving sophisticated text – is still best handled by humans, according to Matteo Ippoliti.
He’s general manager at LangPros — a Dubai-based translation service.
Essentially, human translators are still better at eliminating mistakes, discerning subtle nuances and rendering translations with panache, according to Ippoliti.
His analysis differs markedly from writer Siri Hedreen. He found that writers in ‘routine cognitive’ jobs like translation are most at risk of losing their livelihoods to automation in coming years.
Essentially, translation jobs fall into the category of formula-driven writing tasks, which can easily be subsumed by AI-generated writing software, according to Hedreen.
All told, more than 500,000 translation positions are at risk of disappearing in three-to-five years, according to Ofer Shoshan, CEO of One Hour Translation.
“We should not sugarcoat this,” Shoshan says. “There will be an impact. The way to deal with it is to first understand and accept the fact it is coming.”
*AI-Generated Poetry: A Prototype AI Bard Arrives: Researchers have come up with prototype AI software that can generate its own poetry.
While Shakespeare won’t be sweating bullets over the robot’s way with words, the system is a credible first step.
“We believe our research to be a novel work in the field of creative poetry generation and hope that our study will open the door to future work in this area,” says Brendan Bena, a summer research intern at the University of Colorado.
The research team used a souped-up version of GPT-2 — an AI text generator released by Open AI last year – to forge their poetry.
*Knock-Off Travis Scott Song Surfaces – Courtesy of AI: Ad agency Space150 has produced its own knock-off of Travis Scott music, using AI-generated writing and similar tools.
The work, which was released as a music video, relies on lyrics produced by an AI-text generator.
Ned Lampert, executive creative director at Space150, stresses that the AI needed a fair amount of coaching from his creative team to render the music video.
But Lampert also maintains that the tech shows promise for coming up with off-the-wall – and sometimes highly usable – creative ideas.
“It came up with things that we would never come up with,” Lampert says. “I love the beautiful mistakes that we make all the time that get turned into work — or situations — where someone says something ridiculous and then we end up doing it.
“And there were some of those types of behaviors within this process.”
*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.