https://digiday.com/media/forbes-built-a-robot-to-pre-write-articles-for-its-contributors/From Digiday:
This story and its headline have been updated....MUCH MORE
Forbes is investing in tools to make its newsroom more bionic.
Over the summer, the business publisher, which just had its most profitable year in more than a decade, rolled out a new CMS, called Bertie, which recommends article topics for contributors based on their previous output, headlines based on the sentiment of their pieces and images too. It’s also testing a tool that writes rough versions of articles that contributors can simply polish up, rather than having to write a full story from scratch. The CMS is currently available to Forbes’ editorial staff and senior contributors in North America, and will be rolled out to all of its contributors in North America and Europe in the first quarter of 2019. The AI story-writing tool, which Forbes’s product team is experimenting with, does not have an immediate roll-out date.
With Bertie, a contributor who writes regularly about the automobile industry might open up the tool to find the makings of an article about Tesla, complete with links to relevant, related articles published both on Forbes and elsewhere. The tool will surface images that might improve the story as well. Bertie is part of a broader focus on using artificial intelligence to make publishing more efficient for Forbes staff, and to make it as easy as possible for visitors to consume multimedia content on Forbes’ sites, said Forbes Media’s new chief digital officer, Salah Zalatimo. “Anything we can do to make it easier and smarter to publish,” said Zalatimo, who previously served as Forbes’ svp of product and technology. “That’s the loyalty we bring [our contributors].”
Though contributor networks have fallen out of fashion for some publishers recently, Forbes continues to embrace its own network. About a year ago, it modified its contributor program so all of its members, some 2,500 people, are paid a minimum of $250 per month, with payments rising based on the number of loyal readers they accumulate. Those contributors are supervised by members of the Forbes editorial staff, which totals nearly 150, Forbes CEO Mike Federle said.
The contributors produce a majority of the nearly 300 pieces of content Forbes publishes per day....
Earlier this year:
"Commerzbank Replacing Human Research Analysts With Artificial Intelligence"
(metaphor party mix)
And as noted back in 2016's:
Artificial Intelligence and the Role Of the Literary Critic
First they came for the literary theorists and I did not speak out because--well, you know the drill.*
*First they came for the journalists and I did not speak out-Previously:
Because I was not a journalist.
Then they came for the ad agency creatives and I did not speak out-
Because I was not an ad agency creative. (see below)
Then they came for the financial analysts and I
said 'hang on one effin minute'.
"We Trained A Robot To Write Like Tom Friedman"
The Associated Press Is Leading the Charge to Deploy Robo-journalists
According to the AP, no journos were harmed in the making of this venture
Automating the Newsroom: The AP's Robot Copy Editor
"AP's 'robot journalists' are writing their own stories now"
Robo-journalists: Beyond the Quakebot
And Here Come the Robo-journalists "The CIA Invests in Narrative Science and Its Automated Writers"
Robot Lobbyists Say Robots Good, Create Jobs
Sure, MoneyBeat Says Their Posts Are Not Written by Robots But How Can We Know?
Automation Steals Jobs: Röböts Playing Motörhead
Washington Post considered using robot sportswriters
A Deep Dive Into the Future of RoboAnalysts (will entry level hedgies still command $353K to start?)
A Job the Robots Won't Take: Become a Financial Charlatan
Robot Writing Moves from Journalism to Wall Street
"The automation of creativity: scary but inevitable"
