A major New York news outlet is using AI to re-package evergreen stories — or news stories that generally stay fresh and new over time — for a prototype new Web site.
Dubbed, ‘News 12 Spark’, the digital property targets younger news consumers who enjoy news videos and short, ‘snackable’ text stories that are often a few paragraphs long.
Essentially, the AI harvests evergreen news stories produced by human reporters at News 12 — a long established TV station in metro New York — and then auto-repackages those stories for consumption by younger visitors.
The news platform — completely automated by AI — was created with help from the Google News Initiative, according to Chris R. Vaccaro.
Vaccaro is vice president, Digital, Altice USA News.
Observes Vaccaro: “We wanted to build a content vertical using our existing staff and resources, and figured the best way to do this was to use high-quality, evergreen content the network had already produced — entertainment stories, lists, local guides and lifestyle content.
“The key would be to surface it in a new and unique way — and automate the process.”
Currently, visitors to News 12 Spark can drill-down to specialized news coverage by region, i.e.: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Connecticut, Hudson Valley, Long Island, New Jersey or Westchester.
Adds Vaccaro: ” We initially only thought about attracting a younger audience.
“But the possibilities are endless for content verticals, because we produce so much content that it can all be automated to various new sites.
“We could spin-up a site about pets, local sports teams or food destinations,” for example.
*In-Depth AI Writing Tool Review: Quillbot: MyWPLife offers an in-depth look at AI writing assistant Quillbot in this review.
The tool is designed to ingest a piece of writing and rephrase the content by changing its sentence structure and replacing numerous words with synonyms.
Quillbot also summarizes documents and checks grammar.
The tool has a free trial version, as well as a number of billing options, including $4.95/month.
MyWPLife also offers a related review, featuring its take on the five best alternatives to QuillBot.
*Real Estate Listings: Now Auto-Generated by AI: A new online tool promises to auto-generate the real estate listing for your house, office building or other property with just a few data points.
Essentially, the tool, Listing AI, works by first asking you to input key data about your property.
Its software does the rest — generating a listing in seconds.
One caveat: The listings generated are not perfect.
So you’ll most likely need to do a little tweaking before the description you want works for you.
Even so, Listing AI — which runs on the powerful GPT-3 auto-text generator — is handy for people who simply have no chops when it comes to writing.
GPT-3 is advanced AI auto-writing software that runs on a supercomputer and is licensed for various applications — like Listing AI — by Microsoft.
Listing AI offers a free trial and a currently discounted rate of $9/month.
(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.)
*Study: 15% of News Stories Now Auto-Generated by AI at Key News Outlets A new academic study finds that 15% of news stories are now automatically generated at leading news outlets using AI.
Most of the 130 AI implementations discovered by the researchers were found at larger news organizations — heavy hitters that have the deep pockets to hire AI experts and experiment with the technology.
John Conway, vice president, WRAL Digital, Capitol Broadcasting Group — interviewed by the researchers — says the work AI can do is “work that reporters could do without machines, but it would take much longer.
“I see a big benefit of AI as the reallocation of resources, especially for smaller newsrooms.”
*Marketing Tool Enhanced with AI Personalization: Marketing software maker Amperity is adding an AI auto-text generation tool to its mix to help users easily personalize marketing messages.
Specifically, the tool will help users of Amperity personalize marketing messages by audience segment — such as big spenders, household spenders, customers who appear ready to leave the brand and more.
The auto-text generation tool doing the AI work for Amperity is Persado.
*Podcast Profile: AI Translation CEO: Spence Green, CEO Lilt, offers his insights on AI-powered translation in this podcast available at Slator.com.
AI is currently revolutionizing the translation industry, automating many translation jobs that were once performed by humans.
Green says human translation generally runs businesses $60-to-$80-a-page.
Using Lilt as an aid, human users of the tool can drive down that cost about 50%, according to Green.
The podcast interview is also available in Q&A text form at the same link.
*Automator of Legal Docs Snares $2.5 Million in Funding: AI legal software firm Josef has added $2.5 million to its coffers.
Josef’s tool enables legal professionals to automate the generation of some legal documents and emails, interactions with clients, and dispensing of legal advice.
Says Sam Flynn, COO, Josef: “Legal help is inaccessible. Most people can’t afford it, and those who can find it opaque and inconvenient.
“We set out to solve this problem by empowering lawyers to change the way they work.”
*Profile: AI Legal Writing Assistant Clearbrief: The American Bar Association Journal offers an in-depth profile of a new AI tool — Clearbrief — that helps lawyers optimize legal briefs.
Specifically, the software evaluates how well sentences in legal briefs are supported by legal documents cited.
Lawyers using the system will see their writing scored “in a color-coded way, so you can quickly see whether something you wrote seems like it is well supported by whatever it is you cited to,” says Jacqueline Schafer, Clearbrief CEO.
Some venture capitalists apparently like what they see.
Clearbrief has raised $1.2 million in seed funding so far.
*AI Writing Firm Snags $1.3 Million in New Funding: Auto-text generation firm Narrativa has secured new funding to further develop its work with pharmaceutical companies.
A pioneer in AI-generated, Narrativa writing currently works with a number of pharmaceutical companies to automate the writing of clinical study reports.
Such reports are critical for winning FDA-approval of new drugs.
(For an in-depth look at the trend in auto-generated company reports, check-out, “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart. )
*AI Sleuthings: Who Wrote the Oldest Copies of the Bible?: Researchers using an AI tool now believe two scribes, not one, may have written the Dead Sea Scrolls — the oldest known copies of the bible.
The researchers are led by Mladen Popovic, an expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls and a professor at the University of Groningen.
The researchers used AI pattern recognition software to analyze the ancient writing.
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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.