An article about an earthquake became the first computer generated story to be published by a newspaper. The computer behind it is the work of journalist and programmer Ken Schwenke, who created an algorithm that generates short articles when an earthquake occurs.
This mechanical journalist draws information from trusted sources such as the US Geological Survey and places the data into a template. The same machine uses another algorithm to generate stories about crime in the city, although that still requires the attention of human editors to decide which gets printed.
As of yet, the machine based stories will not be replacing humans; but it will potentially become more commonplace as the algorithm becomes more efficient. Eventually, we could be seeing a world where computers generate basic news stories about the weather, sports, and stock market movements.
[source: BBC]
