While today’s artificial intelligence generated writing regularly stuns, the best may be yet to come. “Algorithmic journalism to date has largely focused on automating simplistic rote reporting that prioritizes speed over creativity,” observes Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru.
“Yet, machines are exceptionally well suited for the kinds of expansive connection and deep introspective examinations that are at the core of journalism — looking across the chaotic cacophony of the global information environment to tease-out the stories that matter to each of us individually and bringing them to life in ways that show us a whole new side of our shared world.”
In other AI-generated writing news:
*AI-Generated Writing in South Africa: The Media Online takes a look at how Genware – a company that has distribution rights in South Africa for Wordsmith, an AI-generated writing tool – is bringing AI-generated writing to South African newsrooms.
“Seeing so many media organizations struggle with data and getting journalists to create insights from it, you’re ending up with newsrooms with large volumes of people spending an inordinate amount of time creating narrative,” says Gary Alfonso, founder, Gary Alfonso Media. In constrasst, AI-generated media “speeds up the process with 100% accuracy.”
*Does it Matter Who — or What — Wrote the Story?: “Automation has already enabled media outlets to produce massive amounts of content, providing reporters much-needed time for more in-depth journalism,” observes author Rebecca Heilweil. “But norms surrounding how media organizations should disclose their use of automated content production are still developing.”
*Handy AI Tool Auto-Generates Transcriptions: “Trint lets a journalist record the interview on the iPhone app, add markers during the interview at perfect moments, and when she’s done, she can send the entire interview to Trint,” says Jeff Kofman, CEO, Trint .
“The AI-transcribed interview arrives back in a few minutes and can be instantly shared with the entire media production team, Koffman adds.
“Before she has left the newsmaker’s office, the content is being disseminated on social media and broadcast. Her work searching the interview for the quotes for her story is compressed from 30 minutes or more to just a minute or two.”
*Complex Journalism Tasks Safe from AI – for Now: “There may be some jobs that may disappear, like routine news beats — including local stories and crime reports,” observes author V.V. Sundar. However, to investigate, report in-depth, analyze, profile people and produce stories with meaningful context and human emotions, may all seem a bit other-worldly for a robot,” he adds.
“The question is: Will the future newsroom be run on intelligent machines — or will it consist of human reporters and artificial intelligence working together?”
Generating Data Visualizations from Twitter Tweets: The International Journalists Network takes a look at how journalists are using various tools to auto-visualize info from databases. Included is a method for visualizing data from Twitter Tweets.
*A Decade of Data Journalism: What Has Changed?: ” In 10 years, data journalism has gone from a niche reporting exercise to becoming a key part of newsrooms all over the world,” observes author Letizia Gambini.
“2009 was the start of the open data revolution: US government data hub data.gov had been launched in May of that year with just 47 datasets,” observes Simon Rogers, founder, Guardian Datablog and now data editor at Google. “Everywhere, journalists were discovering a new way to work by telling data-led stories in innovative ways,” Rogers says.
The practice expanded exponentially over the next three years, Rogers says. Crowdsourcing became an established newsroom tool. And journalists used databases to manage huge document dumps and to enrich complex news stories.
By the time Rogers joined the Google News Lab to work on data journalism, he says it was clear data journalists would have access to increasing varieties of databases and increasingly larger databases.
Every day, there are billions of searches on Google and other search engines — a significant proportion of which have never been seen before,” according to Rogers. “Increasingly, reporters are taking that data and analyzing it — along with tweets and Facebook likes. This is the exhaust of modern life, turned around and given back to us as insights about the way we live today,” he says.
–Joe Dysart is 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.