A new report from the Tow Center finds that when it comes to covering the Coronavirus, AI-generated writing offers some distinct advantages.
Specifically, editors and reporters found that working creatively with the tech enabled them to develop “a considerable edge in deploying automated news quickly and efficiently in the midst of a global pandemic,” according to Samuel Danzon-Chambaud, the report’s author.
Key to the success of the news outlets was the wide availability of Coronavirus information — which was stored and continually updated in easy-to-access databases that were maintained by governments and health authorities.
Given that steady stream of reliable data, news outlets needed only create a series of story templates about the Coronavirus — which could then be continually updated to create fresh stories about how the scourge was progressing.
Observes Danzon-Chambaud: “This type of structured data — that can fit into predictable story frames — lays the groundwork for automated journalism.”
All told, Danzon-Chambaud’s report offers an in-depth look at how nine news outlets effectively used AI tools to automate Coronavirus coverage.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*In-Depth Look: HelloScribe: HelloScribe offers a bold claim about its AI-writing generator: It can render text in more than 5,000 editorial styles.
That includes writing in the style of The New York Times, the Associated Press and the Harvard Business Review.
The package is specifically designed for press relations agencies and others looking to pitch news outlets with copy that captures their imaginations — and tastes.
This in-depth look at HelloScribe — albeit written by the company that sells the software — offers a detailed overview at how the package works.
Key features of the package include:
~HelloScribe ingested millions of high-quality news articles to ‘learn’ how to write news with style
~The package is designed to offer original, editing ready, plagiarism-free drafts
~HelloScribe emphasizes that the articles produced should be seen as drafts for polishing — not as finished articles
~HelloScribe can be trained to write in your own writing style — if you have a number of writing clips to you name online
~HelloScribe comes with a built-in research companion that enables a user to research relevant facts and add article citations
~HelloScribe generates five kinds of writing: Headlines, articles, summaries, brainstorming pieces — and article pitches that can be sent to editors
Bottom line: HelloScribe is an interesting new tool that lasers-in on attempting to produce on form of writing very well — news content — rather than attempting to create every format of writing imaginable.
At the very least, it’s well worth monitoring in coming months and years.
*Another AI Auto-Writer Joins the Ranks: Copymatic is the flavor-of-the-week in terms of new AI writers hitting the market.
Like many other AI writers, Copymatic is designed to auto-generate sales copy, emails, ads and video scripts.
Text from the new tool — which also does text translation — is available in more than 100 languages.
*How to Completely Automate a Newspaper Section: Norway Publisher Bergens Tidende is offering a Webinar September 22 on how to completely automate the home sales section of a newspaper.
Bergens Tidende won three Global Media Awards for automating its home sales Web site domain, which is written entirely by robots.
During the past 12 months, the real estate domain has attracted more than one million page views.
Plus, the section is also converting 5% of all Bergens Tidende readers from looky-lous into paying subscribers.
Squiring the September 22 Webinar, slated for 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, will be Jan Stian Vold, news editor, Bergens Tidende.
*AI as Writing Style Guide: Besides auto-generating text, AI tools are increasingly being used to auto-correct writers to ensure they adhere to the specific writing style of an organization or publication.
Observes Jennifer Schmich, a writer for The Next Web: “My team manages Writer (an AI-powered style guide) for Intuit.
“In return, it extends the expertise of our style council and its decisions to folks all over the company who create content, especially to non-writers who shouldn’t be making those decisions.
“With its help, our style council doesn’t have to spend tons of time promoting the style guide, communicating updates, providing training, and pleading for adoption.”
Schmich likes Writer because the software gets better over time emulating the kind of style an organization is looking for as writers interact with it.
Observes Schimch: Writer “learns how writers write as we feed it more content and interact with corrections.
“It outperforms other checkers.”
*AI and Academic Writing: Not Ready for Prime Time?: While many journalists, marketers and other writers use AI-generated writing on a daily basis, reliable use of the tech is still on the horizon for academic writers, according to Shu Chian Tay.
Tay is a science communicator at the National University of Singapore.
“We still need researchers to analyze data, present them as figures, and develop a coherent story before feeding all this information to the AI machine,” Tay says.
Even so, it appears some academics have begun relying heavily on AI to write their papers.
Case-in-point: A study of papers indexed by citation database Dimensions uncovered more than 860 publications featuring unscientific writing.
Researchers who conducted the study believe the academics behind those papers used AI — rather than their own wits — to write their papers.
*How AI is Remaking the Legal Profession: For lawyers and others looking to take a deep dive into how AI is transforming the law: There’s a symposium on that.
Dubbed ” Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession,” the online event is slated for September 24-35.
Key tracks include:
~”Alexa! Write a Memo:” The Promise and Challenges of AI and Legal Writing
~An Algorithm Wrote This Brief: The Ethics of AI Legal Writing Tools
~Regulating Algorithms in the Law
The symposium is sponsored by The Legal Writing Institute.
*AI as News Curator: Canada’s The Globe and Mail has had great success using AI to decide what the paper’s front page looks like, according to Marcela Kunova.
Kunova is a writer at Journalism.co.uk.
One of the AI’s surprising discoveries: ” Politics does not trend on Wednesday afternoons during House of Commons debates but it does on Saturdays at 11 a.m.,” observes Kunova.
“So that is when the coverage is published.”
Other insights the AI has unearthed for The Globe and Mail:
~Horoscopes in the paper were read more widely after they were moved up an inch
~Globe and Mail readers wanted more opinion content — so the newspaper increased publication of that content
~Globe and Mail readers read more on the weekend — so the newspaper now publishes more content on those days
*Top 5 AI Content Generators: What’s New on the Net has come-up with its own list of what it considers to be the top five AI auto-writers.
In addition to some standard recommendations is Headlime, which offers more than 1,700 templates for creating virtually every format of writing imaginable.
Other recommendations that round-out the top five:
~Snazzy.ai
~Writesonic
~Jarvis
~ArticleForge
*AI Big Picture: $20 Million Grant Inked for New AI Research Institute: The National Science Foundation has bankrolled a new AI institute that will be led by researchers from Columbia, Washington and Harvard universities.
Dubbed the “AI Institute for Dynamic Systems,” the new think tank will focus on pushing the envelope on machine learning.
The AI Institute is one of eleven new NSF-funded centers that are part of a larger $220 million investment in AI and AI-enabled research.
Observes Hod Lipson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University: “There is a limit to what we can understand with our naked brain. Once we can use AI to amplify discovery, however, all bets are off.”
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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.