Robot journalism, also known as algorithmic journalism, automated journalism, or automated reporting, consists in the production of news stories/articles by computer programs. In essence, it is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to journalism practices. Through AI software, stories are produced automatically by computers rather than by human reporters.
These programs interpret, organize, and present data in human-readable ways. The process involves algorithms that scan large amounts of data, select from an assortment of pre-programmed article structures, order key points, and insert details such as names, places, amounts, rankings, statistics, and other figures. The output can also be customized to fit a certain voice, tone, or style.
Automated reporting is possible for events that happen regularly and the results of which can be quantified. “Quantified”, meaning that there is structured data available about the outcome of the event. A few examples are sports matches, stock prices, quarterly company reports, frequently published socioeconomic statistics, and election results. Investigative reporters can use AI to make sense of huge document leaks, geographical data, or satellite data. It can also be used by video editors to help organize hours of video footage. The use of AI in journalism is already a reality and some newsrooms are using it for some of the mentioned examples, although in some cases articles or other journalistic products created by AI benefit from human contextualization by referring, for example, to the causes of the presented facts.
