Google has given the Press Association, the national news agency for the UK and Ireland, a grant of €706,000 (about RM3.5 million) to fund AI news writers. The project is being developed with Urbs Media, a new startup specialising in data-driven news.
The new service is set to be called RADAR – Reporters And Data And Robots – and will put out some 30,000 stories a month. That said, it’s not all computers behind the service. Five journalists are still engaged to identify stories from national databases from which the news will be drawn from. These individuals will also be responsible for creating the templates from which the news will be published.
Computer written news is not exactly something new. The New York Times has been using a computer to write earthquake related news since 2014. In this case, the algorithm simply pulls data from national resources and inputs it into the relevant sentences in the report.
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RADAR’s reports will presumably work in much the same way. With the journalists also checking the output so that it meets editorial standards.
AI reporters will not completely replace humans in the workplace, but it will allow more information to be reported. Data driven news is relatively easier to report on, as there is little else publish other hand the information provided. For example, things like sports results and stock prices. Humans are, of course, still required for later commentary and analysis.
We are not at all worried about robots coming for ours jobs either.
[Source: Press Association]
