Beijing: A first business report written by a robot has been published in China this week, stoking fears among local journalists that it could make forays into the country’s state-controlled media, threatening their jobs.
The article, was written in Chinese and completed in just one minute by Dreamwriter, a robot journalist designed by Chinese social and gaming giant Tencent that apparently has few problems covering basic financial news. Tencent released its flawless 916-word article via the company’s instant messaging service.
“The piece is very readable. I can’t even tell it wasn’t written by a person,” Li Wei, a reporter was quoted as saying by South China Morning Post.
The subject of the article was China’s August consumer price index. The article even quoted analysts on the economic prospects of China, which is experiencing a slowdown after decades of high growth.
“I have heard about robot reporters for a long time, but thought they only operated in the United States and Europe,” Li said, adding that “I’m not ready to compete with them yet.” More worryingly for local Chinese reporters, the threat to their careers may dwarf the one faced by their peers in other countries.
“Generating news stories in plain language following a certain template is not difficult for computers,” said Wu Dekai, a former associate professor at Hong Kong University. “There is no reason why we can’t do it in Chinese as well,” Wu added.
The software powering the robots that write these stories uses algorithms designed to collate data, find patterns and pull quotes from sources by sifting through reams of material, including those found online.
The robot workers take no holidays, miss no deadlines and produce clean, well-researched copy for as little as $7 an article in the US. On top of that, the algorithms that power these machines are designed to catch errors and learn from their mistakes, the report said.