Winds of Change: Robot Writers Take the Web

AI-driven content creation and marketing programs like NewsCred, Sprinklr and Contently will generate more than 30% of all digital content within the next two years, according to Gartner, a market research firm.

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Specifically, the AI tools will increase productivity and make advertising more effective, according to study authors Nicole Greene and Laurel Erickson.

But they will also disrupt the creative process, Green and Erickson add.

In other AI-generated writing news:

*AI-Generated Writing Meets Fantasy Baseball: Incredibly Nuanced: ‘Baseball fanatic John Mancini finds it hard to get over just how personalized the AI-generated communications are from his fantasy baseball league.

“What is amazing about this from a customer experience perspective is the incredible amount of personalization and detail” that goes into auto-generated communications from the fantasy league, Mancini observes.

*AI That Writes in Trumpian Style: Blogwriters have trained an AI-generated writing program to pen posts in the style of President Donald Trump.

The result: People who tried to tell the difference between robo-writings and the real musings of Donald Trump were fooled 60% of the time, according to Futurism writer Kristin Houser.

The blogwriters used CTRL, a prototype AI-powered system from Salesforce Research, to generate a Trump writing style.

The system is trained by exposing it to numerous posts written in the style it needs to emulate.

*AI-Generated Writing Firm Churning-Out Breaking News Coronavirus Stories: Automated writing firm Arria is transforming Coronavirus data into easy-to-understand text summaries.

The quick updates are accompanied by graphic illustrations of the same data created by business intelligence programs Microsoft BI and TIBCO.

“People don’t have to try to decipher the charts and the graphs,” says Sharon Daniels, CEO, Arria. “The AI-driven narrative analyzes the data for them and explains the most important information in plain language .”

*Computerized Poetry: Not Ready for Prime Time, Poet Says: As writers of all stripes eye AI as a potential job killer, computational poet Nick Montfort remains unperturbed.

“Computers are tireless in mining data, producing combinations, and working towards objective functions,” Montfort observes.

“They can be extraordinarily dogged and compelling explorers of language. And of course, they can fill out formal patterns.

“But – here I’m leaning on something journalist Italo Calvino said in the 1960s, which remains true – they don’t have individual and cultural histories.

“So, right now, while a computer can help us see things in data, it’s hard for a text to actually mean something deep to a computer.”

*AI-Generated Email Marketing: A Primer: Mike Kaput, a senior consultant at PR 20/20, offers a beginners’ guide to AI in email marketing with this post.

“AI can actually help you improve the words you use in your emails – at scale,” according to Kaput.

Specifically, some AI programs are currently writing “email subject lines even better than humans can,” Kaput observes.

Plus, AI tools can highly personalize text, creating “copy that resonates with any audience, segment or individual,” Kaput adds.

*AI Newsrooms of the Future: What the Jobs Will Look Like: “In the future, we will see more newsrooms asking for writers that understand how to work with AI, editors that understand how to oversee smart tools and programmers that can design journalistic computer programs,” observes Francesco Marconi.

He’s a longtime player in AI-generated news and helped spearhead AI implementations at The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press.

Marconi is also author of the new book, “Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism.”

Here’s what many future jobs in journalism will look like as AI burgeons across the industry, according to Marconi:

*Automation Editors: These retooled editors will be responsible for ensuring AI integrations in the newsroom go smoothly – as they simultaneously maintain editorial reliability.

*Computational Journalists: These 2.0 versions of the ‘ink-stained wretch’ will continue to weave their way with words as they embrace the latest in AI-generated writing and research tools.

*Newsroom Tool Managers: Scouts for ever-better AI newsroom technologies, these experts will also continually train on-staff journalists to ensure they get the most — and latest — from AI.

*AI Ethics Editors: Stewards of the ‘good fight,’ these leaders will be “responsible for the transparency and explainability of algorithms, as well as the use of training data,” Marconi observes.

Ethics editors will also “develop best practices for methodological disclosure and for quickly addressing any issues related to algorithmic errors or bias,” he adds.

Insights into AI in the newsroom abound in Marconi’s new book, which offers an in-depth, detailed, on-the-ground look at how artificial intelligence is transforming journalism.

*Microsoft Hopes New AI Editor Will Tempt Consumers to Subscribe to Microsoft 365: Microsoft is hoping to convince consumers to subscribe to its office suite with its release of a software make-over that includes an AI editor.

It’s “part of an effort to shift more customers to ongoing payment plans that provide a smooth revenue stream,” for Microsoft, according to a Bloomberg News post.

Dubbed Microsoft editor, the AI-powered app automatically offers rewrite suggestions for users of Microsoft Word, Outlook and Microsoft’s Internet browser.

The hoped-for shift towards subscriptions also includes a name-change: As of April 21, Microsoft Office 365 simply becomes Microsoft 365.

Even with the campaign for subscription payments, consumers will be able to buy Microsoft 365 outright.

*AI-Generated Content Marketing: Some Caveats: While auto-generated marketing content seems like a dream-come-true for many, the tech does have some limitations, according to Thomas Griffin.

He’s presdient of OptinMonster and TrustPulse.

“Using AI is not fool-proof, and before you invest in it or rely on AI tools completely, it’s a good idea to become familiar with its weaknesses,” Griffin observes.

Specifically, Griffin points out:

*No Single AI Solution Fits All Needs

*AI Requires Supervision

*AI Algorithms are Literal

*AI Can Be Wanting, Creatively

*AI is Often a Black Box: It Often Does Not Explain How It Gets Its Results

*GPT-2: Different Users, Different Outcomes: AI text generator GPT-2 continues to snare varying reviews – hinging mostly on who’s using it.

Released last year by OpenAI, the text generator initially garnered a reputation that it could produce text so powerfully credible, it might forever muddy the divide between real news and fake news.

Moreover, a recent test of the AI text generator rated an essay it produced as acceptable, according to a recent article on Medium.

But Joshua Benton, director, Nieman Journalism Lab, is skeptical.

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Benton tested the full-blown version of GPT-2 – released last fall — and found that while GPT-2 can create readable prose, it’s not very good at creating believable prose.

Bottom line: While GPT-2 can generate news stories that are grammatically correct, most of its work product would not past muster with a highly skilled editor, according to Benton.

*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.

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