Robot Journalism Is Becoming Creative

Algorithms are able to automatically search the Web for information, pool it

and create a readable piece of writing. In addition, data-based reports in the

area of sport, the weather or finances are already frequently created automat-

ically today.

Recently, for example, merely a few minutes after Apple had announced

their latest quarterly figures, there was a report by the news agency

Associated Press (AP): “Apple tops Street 1Q forecasts”. The financial report

deals solely with the mere financial figures, without any human assistance

whatsoever. Yet, AP was able to publish their report entirely via AI in line

with the AP guidelines. For this purpose, AP launched their corresponding

platform Wordsmith at the beginning of 2016, which automatically creates

more than 3000 of such financial reports every quarter, and which are pub-

lished fast and accurately. It is no longer that easy to distinguish between

whether an algorithm or a human has written a text.

Another exception of recent times is represented by the IBM invention

called “Watson”: After its victory in the quiz show “Jeopardy”, Watson

showed what is already possible with AI in the field of robot journalism. As

the editor-in-chief, Watson created an entire edition of the British marketing

magazine “The Drum”. Thousands of copies of the edition were printed, in

which he had both selected images, adapted texts and designed the pages.

Creative AI that—as was to be shown in the test—works excellently.

To this end, he was fed with data about the winners of the “Golden Lion”

from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was not only

about creating the magazine, but at the same time, about creating AI that

suited the taste of the lifestyle public. Watson was thus meant to create

something that many brands have not succeeded in doing to this day: Place

the stakeholders in the spotlight and align the content marketing activities

with their interests and needs.

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