Robot writers continued to make significant inroads at major news outlets this quarter.
At the Miami Herald, for example, a robot writer now covers real estate.
And at a Canadian university, officials are launching a robotic news service — designed to feed auto-generated news to the Canadian Press wire service.
Meanwhile, creative writers also learned they now have at least a dozen AI tools specifically forged to aid fiction writing.
And the debate over the current and future impact of automated writing raged on.
AI advocates continued to emphasize AI writing’s upside.
But some university professors worried AI writing tools might unleash a tsunami of plagiarized papers across academia.
RobotWritersAI.com also released two important in-depth reports this quarter:
~“Artificial Intelligence Writing Software: Ultimate Guide”
~“Company Reports that Write Themselves”
Here are the details on those and other change milestones for Q4:
*At Miami Herald, a Robot Covers Real Estate: The Miami Herald has joined the ranks of newspapers that have handed over coverage of local real estate to AI.
Dubbed the ‘Miami Herald Bot,’ the AI tech has been auto-reporting on big real estate deals in Miami since mid-October.
The bot’s launch coincided with the last byline of Rene Rodriquez.
Rodriquez was the Miami Herald’s previous real estate reporter, who suffered the unfortunate fate of only being made of flesh-and-blood.
Automating coverage of real estate news has been growing in popularity during the past few years.
The Atlanta Journal has been using AI to crank-out real estate news for more than a year now.
And Bergens Tidende — a Norway publisher — won three Global Media Awards for automating its home sales Web site domain.
Yet another news outlet gung-ho on automating real estate news is Sweden-based NWT Media.
And there’s even an online tool anyone can use — Listing AI — that can generate a written real estate listing in seconds.
*Canadian University Launching Robotic News Service: Ryerson University is preparing to launch a professional automated news service, which will feed its stories to the Canadian Press wire service.
The new venture will be staffed by student journalists and data analysts.
They’ll work together to run fresh data through reusable story templates to auto-generate news stories.
Ryerson will be focusing on creating hyperlocal news stories with the service.
It’s a similar approach used by Radar, a UK-based automated news service.
Radar has been auto-generating highly localized news stories using hyperlocal data for a few years now.
*Creative Writers Now Have at Least a Dozen AI Writing Tools: Speculative fiction magazine Metastellar offers a rundown on twelve AI tools fiction writers can use to punch-up their stories and novels.
Observes Amira Loutfi, a writer for Metastellar: “After experimenting with a dozen of these tools, I believe that the greatest use a creative writer can get out of these AI writing tools is prompting.
“When you use these tools, all you need is a vague idea of what you want to write about and the AI will generate a bunch of random text — with varying degrees of relevance — to your input.”
Tools featured in Loutfi’s rundown include Plot Generator UK, Sudowrite and Story Generator.
*Journalism AI Releases Free Videos on AI Journalism: JournalismAI has posted free videos of all the sessions from its online conference in late November, the JournalismAI Festival 2021.
The online meet offered numerous perspectives on how AI is automating and changing the production of news.
Essentially, the fest was an important online meeting for any editor or writer seeking an update on AI’s current and future impact on journalism jobs.
Specific sessions included expert analysis by AI practitioners on how AI is:
~Automating the production of news stories
~Mining long-form news stories to auto-produce shorter, ‘snackable’ news content
~Automating the production of feature stories
~Being adopted by small and mid-sized news organizations — despite its sometimes hefty price tag
RobotWritersAI.com offers a curated guide to sessions that were most closely focused on how AI is automating — and auto-monitoring — news production.
*A Scribe on AI: How AI Made Me a Better Writer: Count Alex Kantrowitz among those who are all-in on AI-generated writing.
Observes Kantrowitz: “Over the past two years, I’ve adopted AI software at every opportunity and can report that the productivity gain is absurd.
“AI has helped me cut down on menial work and spend more time on creativity — realizing a long-prophesied promise about the technology.
“It’s also teaching me to write tighter and with more precision — and it’s shockingly good in this regard.
“Some ‘experts’ say AI will replace writers. That’s far off.
“Instead, it will make us better.”
*AI-Powered Plagiarism: A Growing Cancer at Colleges and Universities?: Two Canadian scholars worry that the easy availability of AI-generated writing tools is undermining academic integrity.
“Advancements in AI technology have led to new tools, products and services being offered to writers to improve content and efficiency.
“As these improve, soon entire articles or essays might be generated and written entirely by artificial intelligence.
“In schools, the implications of such developments will undoubtedly shape the future of learning, writing and teaching,” observe Michael Mindzak, an assistant professor of education at Brock University and Sarah Elaine Eaton, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary who specializes in academic integrity and plagiarism prevention.
*AI and News: Its Promise and Peril: Some top voices in journalism participate in this 52-minute video.
It offers an interesting look at the current state of AI in journalism — including AI’s promise and peril when it comes to threatening journalism jobs.
Here’s a sample quote from Audrey Cooper, editor-in-chief, WNYC, a panel member featured in the video:
“I might push back a little bit on the idea that it (AI) hasn’t been used — and shouldn’t be used — to replace journalists.
“Because I think AI alone is like any technology — you can use it for good or you can use it for evil.
“And you know unfortunately — many, many, many local news outlets are owned by for-profit companies that are increasingly making less money than they used to.
“And they are looking for a way to cut costs.
“I don’t know any of my colleagues in the editor-in-chief realm who aren’t constantly having to look at ways to cut their newsrooms — while they are getting pressure to increase the amount of content they are providing.
“And so, I don’t think it’s AI to blame.
“But I think it (AI) is often used by the budget people as a way to augment something they are already cutting.”
Contributors featured in the video are:
~Steven Rosenbaum
Executive Director, New York City Media Lab
~Aimee Rinehart
Program Manager for AI & Local News, AP
~Audrey Cooper
Editor-in-Chief, WNYC (public radio)
~Mark Hansen
Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
~Claire LeiBowicz
Head of AI & Media Integrity, Partnership on AI
*U.S. Dept. of Defense Seeks Auto-Contract-Writing System: You know AI writing is truly making inroads when the U.S. Department of Defense puts out a call for proposals for an automated contract writing system.
“The goal is to automate as much of the procurement process as possible — and maybe also prove-out some new use cases where AI can be brought to bear on other DoD (Department of Defense) business systems,” observes Jared Serbu, a writer for Federal News Network.
DoD plans to shake-out the list of vendors eager to develop its automated contract system and award each of the final contenders $50,000 in seed money to develop prototypes, according to Serbu.
*RobotWritersAI.com Rolls-Out In-Depth Report: “Artificial Intelligence Writing Software — Ultimate Guide”: Writers and others looking to harness AI-automated writing are in for a pleasant surprise: Many of these apps are easy on your wallet.
Currently, there are dozens upon dozens of AI-automated writing programs vying for your business — with more seemingly emerging every month.
Pricing for these tools starts as low as $19/month. And many others are available for under $75/month.
Many AI computer scientists — along with early adopters — have been stunned at the ability of these new software programs to auto-generate emails, ad slogans, very short blog posts and similar copy.
And while the tools are sometimes over-hyped — no tool in this auto-writing genre offers instantly usable, long-form writing (200 words or longer) at the touch of a button — they’re absolutely worth checking-out if you’re looking to auto-generate shorter copy in the kind of formats mentioned above.
This report features an ultimate guide to these tools — including how you can find varieties that focus on the specific kind of writing you’re looking to pull-off — along with what’s under the hood.
It also features review summaries of 18 of the most popular of the tools.
*RobotWritersAI.com Releases In-Depth Report: “Company Reports That Write Themselves”: Automated company reports appear destined to go mainstream with Microsoft’s recent entry into the space.
Find out how AI can quickly auto-write and distribute easy-to-understand reports to all key decision-makers at your business with this 2021 piece by Joe Dysart.
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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.