To establish a ‘lightning fast editor‘, automated newsrooms or information coverage that has the support of algorithms and artificial intelligence are several of the possibilities offered by the AI pilot projects that are currently being developed in the journalistic field. Although they raise many questions and are still in the experimental phase, the technological future is already knocking on the doors of the most important newsrooms on the planet.
One of the closest examples is the one that will carry out Spanish Radio Television (RTVE) with the municipal elections to be held on May 28. On this occasion, the pilot contemplates “the automatic writing of news from a technological tool that interprets and transforms the electoral results and converts them into news without human intervention”, point out from the University of Seville (US) the authors of a article about this initiative, published in the Latino Magazine of Social Communication.
According to the work of the US, the generation or automatic writing of news is contemplated in small localities of the so-called empty spain from a technological tool that interprets and transforms the electoral results and converts them into news without human intervention. They intend to provide informational coverage of what happens in the nearly five thousand Spanish municipalities whose population does not exceed one thousand inhabitants.
The AI is called upon to perform those repetitive tasks that journalists currently perform, with greater speed, less economic investment and eliminating the bias of human error.
Luisa Aramburu, researcher at the US
“AI is called upon to perform those repetitive tasks that journalists currently perform, with greater speed, less economic investment and eliminating the bias of human error. In a natural way, the information professional is being directed towards those tasks of investigation or deepening in topics that provide greater added value ”, he tells SINC Luisa Arambururesearcher at the University of Seville.
If this were the future approach, information professionals could spend more time to research and in-depth journalism. “It will provide information professionals with more possibilities to develop their skills in the production of more in-depth journalistic texts. The journalist will be able to dedicate himself to research, analysis and interpretation. A much more difficult task and one that the machine, for now, cannot perform”, points out the US researcher.
In 2014, christer clerwallfrom the University of Karlstad (Sweden) conducted A study inspired by an article published in Wiredwhich measured whether readers were able to identify the authors of texts produced by software or by journalists. The conclusion was that they did not distinguish them, but described the former as descriptive and boring, although objective and credible, and those written by humans as coherent, clear and legible.
“AI is a disruptive phenomenon that encompasses all sectors of society and in journalism it is opening a new horizon of possibilities. Journalistic work routines are being transformed, giving rise to new ways of creating and distributing information,” says Aramburu.
The researcher defends that for the preparation of news it will be key, as well as for faster dissemination, to broaden coverage —due to the degree of personalization that can be achieved— and to bring events of interest closer to each specific audience.
The symbiosis between journalist and AI is absolutely necessary to create the optimal synergies in the work of information
Luisa Aramburu, researcher at the US
“A journalist without AI will produce less news, will need more time and resources, will be subject to a greater degree of uncertainty and will not be able, by himself, to reach the level of personalization in events. However, without any journalist to supervise it, it would be a very powerful production system, not very oriented to the sensitivity of the different audiences and even dangerous. For this reason, the symbiosis between journalist and AI is absolutely necessary to create optimal synergies in the work of information”, says the author.
Information in real time for emptied Spain
The inhabitants of emptied Spain have difficult access to services and elements considered elementary in today’s society, including information and local news. AI provides an opportunity to reverse this situation. In the case of journalism, it makes it easier to be present in their localities and be useful to them in terms of being informed about what is happening in their immediate environment.
The start up Spanish Narrative Artificial Intelligence will be in charge of carrying out the automated coverage project for RTVE. This company has previously worked on the production of automated news for Agencia EFE, El Confidencial, Sport, El Periódico, El Independiente, 20 Minutos, El Heraldo, La Información and MediaPro.
Its work will consist of the automatic generation of news with the results of the elections in the towns, in real time, generated from the electoral data provided by official sources. “A robot writing political news for empty Spain”, is how they define it.
A robot writing political news for emptied Spain
They will cover approximately five thousand municipalities In this way, a total of seven professionals will be involved, including technicians and journalists, from the public entity, plus five experts from the technology company.
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A long process with different tests
It has been a development process of thirty months with different stages: the first had to do with the conceptual design of the news; the second, with the elaboration of the structure of the product, and the third stage, with implications in the style that the texts will present. since local coverage is scant or non-existent In this regional sphere, for Aramburu it is “very valuable information for those who could feel forgotten by journalism.”
The system can offer two services: news that is published automatically and a type of content based on a basic data template, which the journalist can easily complement and edit.
For the first test they had the collaboration of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the Ministry of the Interior and Minsait (for the database) in the 2021 Assembly elections, held on May 4. It started at 8:00 p.m. and the first news was published half an hour later, until 12:39 a.m. the next day. In total, around 2,600 news items were generated with 77 batches of files available.
The idea is not only that the user of a town receive the news of the municipal elections of his town in a fast way, but also that he can have access to an image, a photo, graphics and that he can also hear it
vila fumas
“The idea is not only that the user of a town receives the news of the municipal elections of his town in a fast way, but also that he can have access to an image, a photo, graphics and also that he can hear it through the voice of one of our news presenters in that town,” he explained. Pere Vila i Fumasdirector of Technology Innovation and Systems at RTVE to Aramburu, during the preparation of this study.
The AI intervenes from the identification of the newsworthy topics, going through the compilation of contents, the tracking between its own databases and those of others, the automated creation of news, the transcriptions of voice to text, from text to infographics or to video or the generation automated written texts.
“Journalistic routines are going to change both in their way and in their elaboration, we have to assimilate it within the profession and adopt it in a natural way for the benefit of the audiences, the media and the journalists themselves”, emphasizes the expert , who considers it essential to draw up an ethical code that regulates the use of AI in journalism, “is not only necessary but essential,” he concludes.
Although, according to the authors of this research, the possibility that robots replace humans in this sector it is still a long way off, we will have to closely monitor how journalism as we know it evolves and transforms.
