Journalists beware: Financial news could soon be written by robots
Are earnings reports so mundane that a robot can be trusted to produce them? The Associated Press thinks so.
The news service will soon entrust reports on earnings and some other business stories to an automated system so it can better resource more in-depth business coverage.
The AP expects to produce more than 4,000 reports using the software from Automated Insights, a company it also recently invested in, compared to its current 300 human-produced earnings reports every quarter.
It could be a worry for journalists who might be slightly concerned about the rise of robot journalist overlords but it’s unlikely robots will be replacing journalists anytime soon according to a researcher in Sweden who looked at how readers respond to articles written by humans and bots.
The robots will be left with the mundane jobs like earning reports, Christer Clerwall told New Scientist, while humans will prosper at more complex stories providing narrative and eyewitness reporting that robots can’t quite get their heads around – yet.