by Joe Dysart, editor, RobotWritersAI.com | Feb. 15, 2021
Still often considered a novelty by many, artificial intelligence generated writing will in fact become a major author on the Web in 2021.
Many news media experts tracking the tech believe AI-generated writing could become a dominant force in journalism by the close of 2023.
And many companies looking for an easy way to auto-write reports will be pleasantly surprised at the number of AI-generated writing plugins available designed to more easily integrate AI writing with their favorite database program.
Not surprisingly, the overall angst many editors and writers feel at the increasing automation of their jobs will bleed into 2021.
And those same editors and writers will want to watch closely as other aspects of professional writing are gobbled-up by AI.
Specific developments that will be head-turning for those inside and outside media include:
~The increasing use of AI as an auto-style guide
~The growing use of AI to hyper-localize news
~Ever-more sports news stories churned-out by AI
~Experiments using AI to generate opinion pieces
~A growing assault to thwart fake news
All told, it’s going to be difficult for anyone working with – or impacted by – the written word to ignore the growing influence of AI-generated writing by the close of 2021.
Here’s detail on the Top Ten Trends that will be shaping that reality:
*AI Will Become a Major Author on the Web 2021: Already churning out thousands of news articles, business reports, opinion pieces, blogs and newsletters every day, AI-generated writing is poised to become a major author on the Web in 2021.
Indeed, market research firm Gartner is predicting that AI and related technology will be automating production of 30% all content found on the Web by 2022.
Observes Dacian Cimpean, a digital marketer: “One thing is clear: AI is consistent.
“It is only going to get better.
“(And) it can generate content at a speed that humans simply are not capable of.”
Adds Paul Turner, vice president, Enterprise Product Management, Telestream:
“AI used to be relegated to only the fastest supercomputers. But recent advances in software and the use of GPUs to process the algorithms mean that the cost of AI assistance is no longer a barrier to entry.”
*Look for AI to Pervade Journalism as Early as 2023: Currently embraced by a number of top news outlets, the use of AI-generated writing and similar tools could become de rigueur in journalism as soon as 2023, according to David Tomchak.
He’s digital editor-in-chief at the London Evening Standard – a paper that has already brought AI on board.
Meanwhile, some major media outlets already reaping the rewards of AI-generated writing are doubling-down on their investments.
The Washington Post, for example, relied heavily on new AI tools to auto-generate stories about the 2020 presidential election.
And the Canadian Press took a similar tack, moving beyond automated sports stories to automated coverage of politics.
Still other news outlets either adopted AI-generated sports stories – or expanded their use of AI tools to cover sports (see sports below).
*Company Reports That Write Themselves Will be an Easier Lift: During the past few years, everyday companies have been using the same AI tools first adopted by newspapers to auto-write their company reports.
The corporate world’s approach to AI is the same one used by news media’s early adopters: First create a ‘story template’ to auto-generate reports about monthly sales, Web visitor activity, the company’s success using social media or the like.
Then, keep re-running that same story template – populating it with the latest figures from the company database – to continually produce fresh, updated reports on sales, Web activity, social media and the like.
Initially, integrating an AI writing tool with a company database often required intensive custom programming.
But that’s changing, making it easier for companies to AI automate their report writing in 2021.
A number of AI-generated writing firms, for example, now offer plugin versions of their products for companies using database software from Microsoft Excel, Microstrategy, Qlik, Spotfire, SAP or Tableau.
And Zapier – a software integration program — now has the ability to integrate AX Semantics’ AI-generated writing tool into more than 2,000 commonly used business tools, including Salesforce, WordPress, Magento and Shopify.
(For an in-depth look at how AI is auto-writing business reports, check-out “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart.
*AI Anxiety Among Editors and Writers Will Grow: Not surprisingly, the building tsunami of automated writing has more than a few wordsmiths looking over their shoulders – an unease that will grow in 2021.
In fact, 69% of readers surveyed in 2020 saw AI-generated writing and automated writing as a job threat, according to the Press Gazette – a publication covering journalism in the United Kingdom.
And 56% of marketers expressed the same fears in a 2020 survey by Bynder.
Not helping matters: A robot was one of the winners in the 2020 Online Journalism Awards competition.
Says media futurist Hossein Derakhshan:
“AI technologies are now capable of doing almost every aspect of the news practice — with a fraction of the costs in the long term.
“The AI capture of newsrooms will kill more jobs than we can imagine.
“It will also kill many newsrooms who can’t afford to invest in AI technologies to lower their costs in order to survive.”
(For an in-depth look at how AI is threatening writers’ livelihoods, check-out, “The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs,” by Joe Dysart.)
*AI as Style Guide: From Novelty to Workhorse: Besides auto-generating simple stories, AI will increasingly be used to standardize the use of language at companies, organizations and news outlets.
Many consumers are already availing themselves of this capability by using AI Writing Assistant Grammarly (and similar tools).
Grammarly offers suggestions to make writing seem more academic, businesslike, casual, creative and the like – your choice.
Meanwhile, tools like Textio enable businesses to write job ads that sound more ‘inclusive’ and strip-out references that may be seen as ageist or sexist.
And Acrolinx promises its AI-driven copywriting tool can be trained to ensure any text written within a company conforms to that company’s writing style and brand.
Still other AI writing stylizers include:
~Persado
~Carnegie Mellon’s experimental ‘politeness’ word engine
~An experimental tool that writes in Trumpian style
~Crystal’s AI, which alters writing tone based on a recipient’s personality
*AI Hyper-Localized News Will Increase its Footprint: Pioneered by firms like UK-based Radar, hyper-localized news is poised for growth in 2021.
Radar produces thousands of news stories each month by using a story template – on the release of a major health report, for example – and then populating that template with data that localizes the news story to a specific British town or village.
The result: Using one health report, Radar can generate a different story on the report’s findings for every town and village in Britain.
Not surprisingly, other publishers are cropping-up to join the hyper-local news party.
Those include:
~Just the Facts, a UK-based competitor to Radar
~Nowhere News, a hyperlocal news service for California cities and regions
~Crosstown, a hyperlocal news service for Los Angeles
~Newsday, a New York-based newspaper that experimented with auto-generated hyperlocal stories on 124 school board elections
~AI+ Automation Lab, which is investigating the viability of hyperlocal news coverage in Germany
*AI’s Stronghold in Sports News to Become Even More Pervasive in 2021: Sports news has always been a perfect fit for AI writing, given that same story templates can be used to report on sports matches over and over again.
For example: Putting together a story about a baseball game, including who won, who lost, what the major plays were, how the pitching and batting stats shake out, etc., is simply a matter of writing a story template for the game, and relying on AI to customize that story by populating it with data generated by a specific game.
So it’s no wonder that thousands of sports stories are now auto-created every day by AI-generated writing.
Expect more publishers to jump-on-board in 2021, as indicated by Sweden’s EverySport Media Group’s recent decision rely on AI for much of its sports news, Germany’s MSU to continue using AI writing for sports and Sweden’s Klackspark’s addition of AI-generated sports writing.
Other news outlets going along for the AI ride in sports include:
~ Sweden’s VK Media
~Reuters
~Richland Source
*AI-Generated Writing Could Move Into Auto-Generated Opinion Pieces: While most AI-generated news stories are simple news reports about sports, business, crime and other data-rich musings, a more creative format may be coming: AI-generated opinion.
Systems like IBM’s Project Debater already generate a pretty good simulation of opinion – and could be harnessed to crank-out opinion pieces for news outlets, according to Cait O’Riordan.
She’s chief product and information officer at the Financial Times.
“IBM-generated opinion could become significant,” O’Riordan says.
Adds Calum Chace, a writer for Forbes, regarding Debater’s impact on human writers: “There is a genuine question about whether new thought leaders will find it harder to get established,” with IBM Debater in the mix.
*The Scuffle Over Fake News Will Become a Brawl in 2021: Social media networks, governments, media outlets and everyday consumers of media are already concerned about the torrent of fake news currently generated by AI-powered writing tools.
Look for that concern to crystallize in 2021 as more spammers, political operatives, marketers and others harness automatic writing to litter the Web with unwanted text.
AI content analysis firm Primer, for example, has won a multi-million dollar contract with the U.S. Airforce to detect and analyze disinformation on the Web.
And Unisys has snagged a contract from the Australian government to develop a system that can smoke-out writing that government considers troublesome.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed an AI tool that helps identify fake news.
Says Christopher Ahlberg, CEO, Recorded Future, a cybersecurity firm:
“Three or four years ago, this was all about expensive, covert, centralized programs.”
He adds: Now, “it’s about the fact the tools, techniques and technology have been so accessible.”
*More Apps Using Writing Engine GPT-3 Will Emerge: The popular jury on GPT-3 so far has decided that the powerful auto-text generator is both breath-taking and somewhat unreliable.
But that has not stopped entrepreneurs from hitching their wagon to GPT-3’s star.
Start-up OthersideAI, for example, has a new app that auto-generates emails using GPT-3.
And Snazzy is riding GPT-3 to auto-produce Google Ads, landing pages and taglines.
Still other start-ups licensing GPT-3 for their new products include Compose and Magic Email.
“The hype is real,” observes Kelsey Piper, a writer for Vox.com who personally tried out GPT-3. “It has its shortcomings. But make no mistake: GPT-3 represents a tremendous leap for AI.”
For an in-depth look at the coming impact of GPT-3, check-out, “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.
–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.