Your Next XII Newsletter Editor?
In a move that could presage new careers for wordsmiths everywhere, it is becoming increasingly possible to use bots to create text copy based on underlying structured data. This has all sorts of implications. Wired Magazine conducted one test of this emerging technology by having Wordsmith, an automated news-writing bot, create an obituary for noted Artificial Intelligence theorist Marvin Minsky, who passed away recently.
The bot didn’t perform too badly, and put the salient details together in a cognizant and highly readable way. When Wired compared its work to that of the New York Times, however, it was clear there is still quite a way to go before such bots can match humans in terms of artistry and impact. But when you’re trying to share basic financial information like earnings releases, artistry is a secondary concern to speed and accuracy. Indeed, XBRL is already being used to create financial news automatically in this way, and it’s able to be translated into multiple languages too. The days of AI driven reporting are clearly just around the corner. Read the article.
