A Chinese court has ruled that AI-generated writing is protected by copyright.
The winner in the ruling: tech giant Tencent. It sued after an article created by its Dreamwriter robot was republished without permission by a financial info Web site.
The Chinese court decision differs from current legal thinking in the U.S. and Canada. Both countries have so far concluded that robot writers do not enjoy copyright protection, according to Ecns.cn.
In the Chinese lawsuit, the court found that robot writers are entitled to copyright protection, as long as their work exhibits reasonable structure, clear logic and detectable originality, according to Ecns.com.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*ABC TV Makes Major Commitment to Data Journalism: ABC has created a new team of data journalists, which will work with eight of its newsrooms to ensure data journalism becomes a core offering of its news division.
The team is headed by John Kelly, an award-winning investigative reporter and data journalist with 25+ years experience.
Before coming to ABC TV, Kelly was director of data journalism at USA Today Network.
*Researchers Roll-Out Enhanced AI-Generated Writing Tool: Researchers at Uber AI have come-up with an innovative technique, which auto-produces writing with more depth, according to Karen Hao.
She reports on AI for MIT Technology Review.
The new approach enhances AI writing programs like GPT-2 — software that generates writing based on the probabilities of word usage –by guiding the software to focus on a particular attribute.
For example, the technique could be used to guide GPT-2 to focus on the particular topic “Tom Petty,” or the particular sentiment, “joy.”
The result of the enhancement: AI-generated writing that’s embued with more meaning, according to Hao.
Uber AI details the new AI writing technique in a paper on its Web site.
*Researcher: With AI, Regulation Should Be Nuanced: New rules proposed by President Donald J. Trump need to regulate AI with nuance — rather than broad stroke directives, according to R. David Edelman.
He’s director, Project on Technology, the Economy & National Security, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“In 2014, before AI was a daily headline, White House colleagues and I tried to size-up how this new technology would change dozens of policy areas — from criminal justice to consumer pricing, housing to health care,” Edelman observes. “The lesson: There is no one-size-fits-all approach.”
*Making the Case for AI In Journalism: Maria Teresa Ronderos is convinced AI’s impact on the newsroom will be positive in coming years.
She’s director for the Program on Independent Journalism at the Open Society Foundation.
“If instead of fearing it, journalists embrace AI, it could become the savior of the trade,” Ronderos observes.
*Giving AI Writing Software a Whirl: A Primer: Comedy writer Jamie Brew offers a great step-by-step tutorial on how to use the free AI-generated writing app, Write With Transformer.
Brew covers the basics of how the software works and offers a few strategies on getting the most from its capabilities.
Also included is a look at some of Transformer’s more advanced controls.
Brew’s motivation for experimenting with AI-generated writing: “Text-generating neural networks like OpenAI’s GPT-2 often raise questions about the dangers of fake text: Can a machine write text that’s convincingly, deceptively human?
“As a comedy writer, I’m more interested in the opposite question: Can a machine produce words that no human would ever write? Can it help me write things that I would never write?”
*AI-Driven NTB: 170 News Clients and Counting: The news outlet client list for NTB’s AI-generated articles has swelled to 170, according to a November 2019 report from the European Broadcasting Union.
The Norway news agency grew its AI client base during the past four years by providing hyper-localized sports stories.
NTB gets data for the AI-generated stories from local reporters, coaches and referees — which feed the sports info to its computer systems.
Once data is secured, it’s simply a matter of using AI templates to generate the news stories.
These days, NTB is expanding its AI-generated coverage to include election results, financial news and crime reports, according to , an editor at NTB.
NTB’s top challenge: Finding editorial staff that deeply understands how AI-generated writing works – and is also convinced the tech will not rob newsroom jobs.
“We need people who can be the intermediates between the editorial and data teams — who understand both worlds and speak both languages,” Aabeh says.
(For the complete story on NTB, see p. 63 of EBU’s report.)
*A Probing Look Inside a Top AI-Generated Writing Firm: ZDNet author Tiernan Ray offers an excellent view into the inner workings of Narrative Science’s AI-generated writing tools.
Narrative Science is one of the leading firms in AI-generated writing.
A significant percentage of Narrative Science’s customers use its software to auto-write company reports.
Narrative’s AI tool pulls this off by drilling-down into company databases and auto-producing easy-to-understand, written reports based on the data.
“I actually think that the head of sales is much more likely to absorb and consume and act on information if it’s delivered in a simple way,” says Stuart Frankel, Narrative Science’s CEO.
Sometimes, companies use Narrative Science’s tool to auto-produce simple text explanations of organization data.
Other times, companies integrate the tool with popular business intelligence software. That enables them to auto-write text explanations of the graphic visualizations – charts, graphs, etc. – commonly generated by business intelligence software.
Popular business intelligence packages currently being integrated with AI-generated writing tools include Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Microstrategy, Qlik, Spotfire and Tableau.
Narrative Science currently offers two AI-generated writing tools, Quill and Lexio.
For an in-depth look at the trend in auto-generated company reports, check out, “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart.
*AI’s Impact on Journalism: A Podcast: News outlet Radio New Zealand offers an overview of AI’s impact on journalism in this 22-minute podcast.
The show features an interview with Charlie Beckett.
He’s director of the Media Policy Project, sponsored by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
*IEEE Offers a Deep Dive Into the History of AI-Generated Writing: The highly respected journal IEEE Spectrum has published a six-part series on AI-generated writing, also known as natural language processing.
Key milestones examined by the series feature:
*The release of text generator GPT-2 in 2019
*Microsoft’s ill-fated AI chatbot, Tay, 2016
*The unveiling of Eliza, the world’s first chatbot, in 1966
*How language generation got its start in 1913
*Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s great notion for producing automated knowledge in 1666
*Combinatronics – perhaps AI-generated writing’s earliest precursor – from the 13th century
Good stuff.
Feel free to send a link to RobotWritersAI.com to a friend or colleague.
–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.