Quarterly business earnings reports are
dull and boring to read. That makes them ripe for automation. The
Associated Press has been using an automated system since last year
to write its stories and few readers noticed. AP implemented the
system six months ago. It now publishes 3,000 such stories every
quarter and that number is poised to grow.
AP says the automated system is now logging in fewer errors than the
human-produced equivalents from years past. Of the estimated 3,000
such reports each quarter, about one hundred will have an added
human touch, either by updating the original story or doing a
separate follow-up piece.
The giveaway is that there is no byline and at the end of the
article we see, "This story was generated by Automated Insights."
The Wordsmith platform also generates millions of articles per week
for other companies, such as Allstate, Comcast, and Yahoo, whose
fantasy football reports are automated.