Common topics include sports recaps, weather, financial reports, real estate analysis, and earnings reviews.
[11] More famously, an algorithm called Quakebot published a story about a 2014 California earthquake on The Los Angeles Times website within three minutes after the shaking had stopped.
With software from Automated Insights and data from other companies, they can produce 150 to 300-word articles in the same time it takes journalists to crunch numbers and prepare information.
[4] By automating routine stories and tasks, journalists are promised more time for complex jobs such as investigative reporting and in-depth analysis of events.
[2][3] Francesco Marconi[12] of the Associated Press stated that, through automation, the news agency freed up 20 percent[13] of reporters’ time to focus on higher-impact projects.
Automation serves as a cost-cutting tool for news outlets struggling with tight budgets but still wish to maintain the scope and quality of their coverage.
Several participants of a study on algorithmic authorship[3] attributed the credit to the programmer; others perceived the news organization as the author, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the work.
"[15] Again, these issues about fairness, accuracy, subjectivity, error, and attempts at influence or propaganda has also been present in articles written by humans over thousands of years.
[3][4][20] The use of automation has become a near necessity in newsrooms nowadays, in order to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for news stories, which in turn has affected the very nature of the journalistic profession.
Additionally, the author argues the reliance on these companies for AI can make it more difficult for news organizations to understand the decisions or predictions made by the systems and can limit their ability to protect sources or proprietary business information.
A 2017 Nieman Reports article by Nicola Bruno[28] discusses whether or not machines will replace journalists and addresses concerns around the concept of automated journalism practices.
One staff member was quoted by The Guardian as saying: “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am – AI has taken my job.” The journalist went on to say that replacing humans with software was risky, as existing staff were careful to stick to “very strict editorial guidelines” which ensured that users were not presented with violent or inappropriate content when opening their browser, for example.