BBC news stories written with automation are becoming ever more sophisticated, according to a piece in Columbia Journalism Review.

The UK-based media outlet started out by auto-generating about 100 simple health stories in early 2019.

But near the close of the year, the BBC was auto-generating nearly 7,000 news stories — hyperlocalized for specific British neighborhoods — on British shopping habits.

Since then, the media outlet has continued to publish automated news stories.

BBC is using software from Arria NLG — a pioneer in AI-generated writing — to auto-write news stores.

The solution relies on template news stories populated with facts, figures — and sometimes the results of calculations — that the software extracts from databases.

These templates work on the same principle as the old Mad Libs game you probably played in grammar school — fill-in-the-blank stories that are populated by nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Most news outlets publishing automated news stores rely on template-driven AI writing — as do untold numbers of companies who use the tech to auto-produce company reports.

For an in-depth look at template-driven AI writing, check-out out “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart

In other AI-generated news:

*In-Depth Review: Closers Copy: The Tech Reviewer has mixed feelings on this auto-writer.

Essentially, the review servIce found the solution often auto-generates unreliable content, lacks grammar and plagiarism tools and sports a user interface that could use simplification.

Interestingly, Closers Copy is one of the few AI auto-writers on the market today that does not use the supercomputer-driven GPT-3 as its writing engine.

Bottom line: “There are plenty of other great (and frankly better) AI copywriting tool options out there,” according to The Tech Reviewer.

*Best AI Writers for 2022 — Another Take: TechRadar has come out with its own list of Top Ten auto-writers for 2022.

Number one on its list is Writesonic, followed by Jasper (formerly Jarvis), Article Forge, WordAI and AI Writer.

TechRadar awarded the top spot to Writesonic for its ability to generate blog posts, landing pages, advertisements product descriptions and emails.

Observes TechRadar: “It’s easy to use: you choose from more than 40 templates, enter a few lines to describe the content, and then the app generates twelve variations — so you can choose which one suits your needs.”

For an in-depth look at the current state of the market in AI writing tools, check-out, “Ultimate Guide: Artificial Intelligence Writing Software,” by Joe Dysart.

*AI Plagiarism Checkers Making It Tougher to Cheat: Stealing content off the Web to use in your college paper is getting a bit tougher, due to AI plagiarism checkers, according to SmartDataCollective.

Observes Sean Parker, a writer for SmartDataCollective: “These programs use algorithms to send web crawlers across the Internet.

“As a result, they can index countless Web pages that don’t have the ‘nocrawl’ attribute in their meta tags.”

*Mash-up: Mixing Company Reputation Analysis With Sales and Similar Data: Signal AI has come up with a way to port company reputation metrics to traditional business intelligence software like Microsoft Power BI.

Essentially, Signal AI monitors a company’s reputation by studying mentions of the business in news media, social media, blogs and the like — and then ports that analysis into commonly used business intelligence programs.

The resulting synergy enables Signal and business intelligence software to “unlock deep insights by cross-indexing other data sets,” according to Dave Benigson, CEO, Signal AI.

*International Journalism Festival Slated for April 6-10: If you’re looking for an excuse to go to Italy, you can tell your boss this upcoming festival offers a number of sessions on AI and journalism.

Specifically, the event will feature panels on:

~Opening AI’s Black Box

~Crash Course in AI and Machine Learning for Journalists

~Holding AI Accountable

~Managing a Newsroom in the AI-Powered Future

*Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference Slated for Aug. 3-5: Marketers looking for the latest on AI writing — and similar automated tools — may want to check-out this upcoming conference.

The gathering is specifically tailored to the non-technical.

You won’t need a background in analytics, data science or programming to grab insights on the best AI marketing tools for your needs, according to the conference organizers.

*Academic Journal on AI and News Publishes First Issue:
A think tank based in United Arab Emirates has published the first issue of its peer-reviewed journal on AI and the news.

Key topics the journal plans to track include:

~automated content

~AI-powered public relations

~robotization of marketing

The new journal is free-to-download.

*Update: AI and Automated Systems Annual Legal Review: Law firm Gibson and Dunn has published its latest analysis of new regulations on AI and automation.

Key developments in AI and the law include:

~The Biden Administration’s plan to develop an ‘AI Bill of Rights’

~The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s designs to regulate the use of AI in consumer products and services

~The California Privacy Protection Agency development of is its own regs on AI, expected in 2023

~Governments across the globe plans to adopt possible standards for ensuring the trustworthy use of AI — as well as a subgenre of AI — machine learning

*AI Big Picture: The Rise of AI Fighter Pilots: Even though sci-fi has anticipated completely automated fighter planes for years, it’s still a bit jarring when that future actually arrives.

This piece in The New Yorker takes an in-depth look at AI-powered fighter planes that are already flying test flights in U.S. skies.

Observes Sue Halpern, a writer for The New Yorker: “A fighter plane equipped with artificial intelligence could eventually execute tighter turns, take greater risks, and get off better shots than human pilots.”

Long term, the U.S.’ goal in this experimentation is to fill war skies with some planes that are unmanned and others that feature human pilots.

The goal: to “overwhelm adversaries with the complexity of it,” Halpern observes.

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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.