Google’s Digital News Initiative is investing $805,000 to fund an automated news writing initiative for The Press Association, UK’s based news agency. The money will be used to fund the creation of the software Radar (Reporters and Data and Robots), which is designed to generate up to 30,000 local news stories a month.
The Press Association has assigned UK-based news startup Urbs Media to create the software that will be able to turn news data into content. The team hopes that the software will be able to fill in the gaps that are under-serviced currently.
In a news release, Press Association Editor-in-Chief Peter Clifton referred to the move as a “genuine game-changer,” stating that the initiative will be focusing on producing stories that might be neglected by local newspapers. “Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually.” People will be involved in the curation and editing of the stories and, hopefully, help limit the possibility of accidentally publishing incorrect information in an era when “fake news” is an equally barbed insult on all sides of the political spectrum,” he added.
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