*AI-powered news service Toutiao currently boasts 250 million users – thanks to its highly sophisticated news personalization.
Toutiao’s smartphone app has become a runaway favorite in the country, customizing news feeds to individual users, based on where they tap, where they swipe and how they comment.
Other key personalization variables of the AI journalism app include how much time users spend on the platform, the times of day they log in and where they’re located when they’re browsing news.
Toutiao also creates its own content. It auto-generates news stories by lifting key sentences from live news reports and combining those with relevant graphics.
The innovative news approach is profiled in a new report on how AI is impacting public service journalism.
It’s a comprehensive study, released in November 2019 by the European Broadcasting Union.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*New ‘Getting Started in AI’ Guide Released For Communications Professionals: Pro communicators looking to get up-to-speed on AI can grab a free copy of the “AI Playbook for Communications Professionals.”
Authored by Cropley Communications, the primer offers a helpful overview of AI in communications, including:
*Good sources for getting and staying current on AI and communications
*Ten AI tools you can add to your communications toolbox
*Bringing AI on board at your communications company or corporation
“We’ve tried to make the playbook as actionable and helpful as possible for communication professionals,” observes Sia Papageorgiou.
She’s director of strategic communication at Cropley Communication.
“Use it to start thinking about what’s ahead when it comes to AI and how it can help you in your role as a communication professional,” she adds.
*PR Pros Need to Up-their-Game With AI: Public relations professionals need to get conversant with AI tools – lest they become industry dinosaurs, according to Kerry Sheehan.
She’s the new artificial-intelligence-in-PR chair at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
“Those who embrace AI will have competitive advantage,” Sheehan says. “PRs who fail to accept this new reality and fear AI will see others move ahead.”
Sheehan’s warning echoes similar concerns from Anne Gregory. She’s a professor of corporate communications at University of Huddersfield.
“Other professions have already done major work on the shape of their future workforce — reviewing education and training, looking at their future role in organizations and society and at the ethics of AI,” Gregory observes.
“We need to get cracking, and get on with some serious work in all these areas.”
*AI Editing Tool Judges Writing Tone With Emojis: AI writing aid Grammarly now analyzes the tone of your writing – using emojis to signal the vibe it’s getting from your words.
“We went into the development process with the goal of creating a simple and intuitive feature that would help people be confident about expressing themselves according to their intention,” says Alex Shevchenko, Grammarly’s co-founder.
Examples of the Emoji system – still in Beta — include a smiley face signifying a friendly tone and a shirt-and-tie, telegraphing writing that has a more formal feel.
*Adopting a Newsroom to AI: A Primer: Journalism AI has put together an informal course on how to bring AI journalism to a newsroom.
“This introductory course will help you understand what AI is and is not, how these technologies are already used in journalism and what value they can bring to your newsroom,” says Charlie Beckett.
He’s director of the Media Policy Project, sponsored by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
*AI App Delivers Speech-to-Text in Real-Time: IT News is using a new AI-driven transcription app that transforms speech-to-text in a snap.
The result: Instant text transcriptions of interviews, which reporters can quickly search for quotes to use in articles.
“We finish stories faster and they include more quotes,” observes IT News writer Simon Sharwood.
“We think that’s because we can make more eye contact during interviews – an example of machines letting humans do the things humans do best,” he adds.
*Smartphone AI App Reads Your News To You: In another twist on AI journalism, a new free app enables you to listen to text articles from TechCrunch, CNET, Reuters, CBS Sports and other popular text news outlets.
“We use AI-powered text-to-voice technology, which produces human-like speech and delivers high-fidelity audio,” says Alex Burakovskiy.
He’s founder of the app, dubbed AudiBrow.
*Some News Organizations Concerned About AI Bias: News outlets who were among the first to adopt AI tools worry that inadvertent bias in AI algorithms could skew news coverage.
Essentially, given that AI is designed by human beings – who can often be unconsciously biased – there’s a significant chance bias will end-up in the code.
“All systems will be biased in the sense that they will reflect the intentions and assumptions of the people who create and use them,” observes Charlie Beckett.
“What matters is how aware you are of the bias and how you manage and minimize it,” Beckett adds.
Beckett is author of a November 2019 study, “New Powers, New Responsibilities: A global survey of journalism and artificial intelligence.”
*Data Journalism Increasingly Popular Newsroom Tool: A 2019 report from the International Center for Journalists finds data journalism is among the most popular tools in today’s newsroom.
One of data journalism’s most widely known applications is the AI-generation of vivid graphs from info databases.
But data journalism also refers to the AI-generation of articles from databases.
*AI-Generated Writing Reaches More Patients About Flu Shots: Health insurer Humana found that an email subject head created with AI performed significantly better than a similar one written by a human.
The winning subject head, “(Insert Patient First Name) We’re Serious About Protecting You This Flu Season,” triggered 31% of recipients to open the email.
That performance was 11% better than the human-created subject head, which only triggered email opens by 20% of recipients.
Humana isolated the winning subject head by taking a subject-head created by a human writer and running it through Persado, an AI-generated writing service.
Persado’s software refined the subject head, yielding a number of alternatives that featured emotionally charged words that worked in other email marketing campaigns.
Finally, those alternative subject heads were tested in emails to a small subset of customers until Persado was able to find the one that performed best – the subject head that triggered opens in 31% of recipients.
“Persado is changing the game” says Brandon Purcell, an analyst at Forrester Research.
*Just For Fun: Actor/Bodybuilder Yuri Tolochko has vowed to marry his sex robot girlfriend – despite their occasional spats.
“Margo doesn’t know how to cook,” says Tolochko. “But she loves Georgian cuisine.”
Feel free to send a link to RobotWritersAI.com to a friend or colleague.
*Also on RobotWritersAI.com — Evergreen Article:
*AI-Created Newsletters: On The Cheap
–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.