Add Salesforce to the growing list of tech titans poised to bring AI-powered automated company reports to businesses across the globe.
Salesforce recently completed its acquisition of Narrative Science — a pioneer in AI-generated writing.
It plans to integrate the tool into its business intelligence software, Tableau.
That means Tableau — famous for its ability to generate charts, graphs and other business images from company databases — will soon be able to auto-generate text analysis of that same data.
Salesforce’s new commitment to AI-generated writing follows Microsoft’s jump into the space last year with ‘Smart Narrative.’
It’s a free tool for Microsoft Power BI — Microsoft’s business analytics software — that can auto-generate a text explanation of a chart or graph with a single click.
For an in-depth look at how artificial intelligence is automating company reports, check-out “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*In-Depth Guide: WordLift: Automated SEO for Writers: While the marketing pitch for some automation is little more than “We do magic — enter credit card information here,” WordLift offers a deep dive into how its automated SEO solution for writers works.
Click here for a series of videos that feature a detailed breakdown on how WordLift uses automation to ensure articles are optimized to appear high-up in search engine returns.
Plus, you can find more detail on the thinking behind WordLift by checking-out “AI Text Generation for SEO: A practical example,” by Andrea Volpini, WordLift’s CEO
Essentially: WordLift is targeting writers who are looking to get the most from SEO using automation.
*Applying AI to Fiction Writing: One Approach: Medium has an interesting article on how writers can use Jarvis — software for auto-generating AI writing — to punch-up their fiction.
Freelance writer Jim Nightingale advises the tool can help:
~Develop fictional characters
~Generate detailed outlines for works of fiction
~Polish your writing
~Build fictional worlds
~Market fiction
*Video Meeting Transcriber ‘Headroom’ Also Interprets Body Language: In the “Next Best Thing to Being There” Department, add video meeting software Headroom.
The tool not only transcribes what is said at meetings into text — it also analyzes the body language of a meeting’s participants to give you a better feel for what was really going on.
Says Headroom CEO Julian Green: “Together, these signals allow us to automatically produce a highlight version of the meeting that is ten times shorter — you can skip between highlights and get a good sense of an hour-long meeting in minutes.”
New York University Snares $200,000 to Integrate AI News Tool: Two staff members at NYU have snared funding to bring AI-powered search to small newsrooms.
The two are planning to integrate their solution ‘Gumshoe’ — AI software that quickly sifts through thousands of pages of documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act — into MuckRock.
MuckRock is an open-source journalism platform used by tens of thousands of journalists to help request, analyze, and publish documents available under the Freedom of Information.
*Cool AI Tools for Automating Journalism Tasks: Monika Sengul-Jones — a writer for DataJournalism.com — is gung-ho on many of the tools AI offers journalists.
Some of her picks:
~AP VoteCast: Proprietary software used by the Associated Press to auto-generate articles on local elections
~CrowdTangle: Analyzes audience engagement social media
~Otter.ai and Trint: Voice-to-text transcribers
~Factiverse: A browser add-on that helps journalists fact-check stories
~Headline Analyzer: Headline optimization tool
*AI Headline Writer Punches-Up Academic Papers: Arch-enemies of the yawn, two UK-based researchers found that AI can help make titles for academic papers sparkle.
Bottom line: The researchers found the best results often come from auto-generating titles with AI — then massaging the result a bit with good old human know-how.
The funniest academic title generated by AI in their study: “Superglue your nipples together and see if it helps you to stop agonizing about erectile dysfunction at work.”
Progress to believe in.
*AI Fueling New Wave of Writing Startups: An onslaught of auto-text generators — often driven by supercomputers — has triggered a number of AI writing startups, according to VentureBeat.
Observes Kyle Wiggers, a writer for VentureBeat: “As of March, OpenAI said that GPT-3 (one of the most well-known auto-text generators) was being used in more than 300 different apps by ‘tens of thousands’ of developers and producing 4.5 billion words per day.”
Competitors to GPT-3 include solutions from Cohere, AI21, Microsoft and Nvidia, EleiutherAI, and BigScience.
(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.)
*One Writer’s Take on Auto-Writer GPT-3: No Thanks: Count Rakia Ben Sassi as one writer not doing cartwheels over AI writing.
She tried auto-text generator GPT-3 for just a few weeks and decided to trash it.
Some of Sassi’s GPT-3 pet peeves:
~GPT-3 sometimes generates fake data to complete an article
~GPT-3 took 9-to-10 hours to ‘auto-generate’ a tech article that met Sassi’s standards
~GPT-3 did not help Sassi increase her income
*AI Big Picture: Now a Thing — AI as Your Best Friend: While it will probably be some time before we all have a super-genius AI friend like the one portrayed in the movie “Her” by Scarlett Johansson, apparently we’re getting there.
A few examples:
~Replika, an AI companion designed to be a personal confidant and sounding board
~UneeQ’s service, an AI robot that relies — in part — on emotional cues and empathy to interact with customers
~Hybri, AI software that enables you to design your own AI friends — even those that look like real people
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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.