Where Does Your Info Come From? Mainstream Media Now Literally Using Robots to Write News
Where Does Your Info Come From? Mainstream Media Now Literally Using Robots to Write News
Corporate ownership of 90 percent of media outlets in the United
States has made the term ‘mainstream journalist’ quite the oxymoron, but
the Washington Post’s newest project eliminates ‘journalist’ from the equation entirely — robots are now writing the outlet’s ‘news.’
Using artificial intelligence technology, the Washington Post
is ‘employing’ software to ‘write’ hundreds of news briefs highlighting
key information about the Olympic Games in Rio in real-time.
“‘Heliograf,’ which was developed in-house, automatically generates short, multi-sentence updates for readers,” the Post proudly announced Friday,
as if the news organization couldn’t predict the collective American
jaw-drop at the notion a computer could simply replace a longstanding
tradition of actual journalism.
