AI-driven robots are cranking-out hyper-local copy for 230 municipalities and two major cities in Sweden, according to Martin Ekelund, head of local news, Aftonbladet.

Doing all the automated writing is ‘The Local Accelerator.’

It’s an AI tool from United Robots, which can continually spew-out short, automated stories about traffic, weather, sports, house sales and the like – tailored to each municipality and city.

Real-time info for the stories is drawn from continually updated databases tracking those trends.

Currently, Aftonbladet publishes mostly traffic, weather and local sports stories produced by the robots.

Says Ekelund: “The strategy was to get closer to local Aftonbladet.se visitors, by offering local content relevant to them.

“The hypothesis was that as a result, we’d also be able to capture more of the local advertising markets.”

In other AI-generated writing news:

*IBM Adds AI Sparkle to U.S. Open: Big Blue drew on its AI-generated writing and analytics prowess to add dazzle to the U.S. Open – the world’s top tennis competition.

Tennis fans logging onto USOpen.org earlier this month were able to use IBM’s AI-driven Watson Discovery to auto-generate articles to questions like “Is Billie Jean King the most influential tennis player in history?”

The questions triggered IBM’s AI-generated writing tech to analyze millions of news and sports sources for insights — and serve-up pro and con arguments in response.

Meanwhile, fans also played with IBM’s Match Insights with Watson Discovery to become ‘instant experts’ about players and tournament match-ups.

Those insights were also generated by IBM AI, which based its coverage and analysis on data drawn from millions of articles and blogs.

*Using AI to Get Your Help Wanted Ads Right: AI-generated writing firm Textio says it has enhanced its tool for writing winning job ads.

The company specializes in software designed to ensure job ads are inclusive and welcoming.

Observes Eleanor Chestnut, product manager, Textio: “In this update, we are focusing on language that might be well-intentioned but is nevertheless offensive.

“Specifically, we are targeting language that disrespects a person’s identity — or is rooted in racist, sexist, or ableist origins.”

*Opinion: Science Journalism Still a Bridge Too Far for AI: While AI-generated writing has grown extremely adept at cranking out basic, data-driven stories, it’s not ready to take on science journalism, according to Harry Collins.

He’s a professor of social sciences at Cardiff University.

Observes Collins: “If AI is of limited use in breakthrough science, then by extension the same is true for science journalism.”

Even so, AI is still creeping into the field.

Science News uses an AI editor to curate its news across of range of disciplines, according to James Dacey, a writer for Physics World.

And SciNote can help you write your next scientific paper, Dacey adds.

*AI-Generated Writing Firm Wins Coveted Award: AX Semantics has been awarded the Gold Stevie Award for best business technology solution in AI/machine learning.

Generally, winners of Gold Stevie awards emerge after more than two months of evaluation by top judges worldwide, according to Nina Moore, a Stevie Awards spokesperson.

Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations across more than 70 nations, according to Moore.

*New AI Add-In Offers Text Analysis of Excel Data: Excel users looking to have their data explained in easy-to-understand text sentences will want to take a look at Arria NLG’s latest offering.

The AI-generated writing firm is offering a new tool that offers text-generated explanations of Excel data.

Common uses of the new add-in include auto-generation of business reports, according to Arria NLG CEO Sharon Daniels.

*Opinion: Do We Really Need Formula-Driven News Stories From AI?: While robot writers are increasingly forging basic stories about traffic, weather, sports and the like, Samya Ayish wonders if this is where AI’s focus should be.

Ayish is a teaching fellow at Google News Lab.

Observes Ayish: “Don’t get me wrong. I am not against AI.

“I believe there is a great opportunity there when it comes to helping journalists in their work.

But “taking stories from robots is not the best employment of these technologies,” she adds.

*Goosing AI Writing with Human Editing: Word-lovers at the Guardian recently put together an op-ed piece that combined writing produced by a high-powered auto text-generator — with a little help from human editors.

Essentially, the Guardian used GPT-3 from OpenAI to write opinion pieces on the coming dominance of artificial intelligence.

They selected eight essays produced by GPT-3 that showed the most promise, then turned to human editors to cobble-together the best of each to create a finished op-ed piece.

For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.

*Opinion: GPT-3 Doesn’t Scare Me: AI writing has a long way to go before threatening bards, according to an anonymous writer on Reddit.

Observes the writer: “Your words have to mean something. You can’t just barf-out text on a screen.

“Yes, AI can write words. But they cannot communicate meaning.

“You have to be a human to tell human stories.”

*News Jobs and Automated Writing: Pioneer Still Sanguine: Automated writing pioneer Nick Diakopoulos still has no fear that AI-generated writing will steal jobs from journalists.

Says Diakopoulos: “Overall, I’m optimistic that AI is not going to hurt journalism in terms of the number of jobs in the long run.

“AI just can’t do all the complex thinking and communication that is needed for good journalism.

“But the type of jobs in journalism will evolve.

“Some jobs will look less like traditional reporting jobs and will involve more IT-skills.”

Diakopoulus is an assistant professor in communication studies and computer science at Northwestern University.

*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.