Algorithms and bots applied to journalism. The case of Narrativa Inteligencia Artificial: structure, production and informative quality

Abstract

This research analyses the organization, work processes and quality of the information produced by Narrativa Inteligencia Artificial, the only company in Spain that writes journalistic texts using the software known as Gabriele for distribution to various media. The study was conducted over a six month period using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with four company professionals with complementary profiles, as well as participant observation during the process of creating an automated news item, and an online questionnaire filled out by 145 journalists (N=145) to assess the quality of the texts produced. The results show that the start-up company fulfils the demands of different sectors such as communication media, and has been increasing the productivity of its content, although it still does not generate complex texts, as this is one of many human qualities that robots continue to lack.

Artificial Intelligence Systems-Aided News and Copyright: Assessing Legal Implications for Journalism Practices

“…This old distinction can now have a new fashion regarding the production of news items produced exclusively or mainly by artificial intelligence systems or produced under the final responsibility of human authors, but the rights on the economic exploitation of all of them are, anyway, to be recognized to copyright holders of the collective work. Some scholars have examined these cases, and concluded that the common practice is for the corporate entities to sign those news items using the company's name, and scarcely mentioning the fact that they have been generated with artificial intelligence systems' aid [21] (p. 13).…”

“…An individual approach to intellectual property (ultimately, an authors' rights approach) is more difficult to defend and the central role in copyright law is now that of the collective, and even of the derivative work. In the more optimistic views, this is good news for journalists, since artificial intelligence systems-aided production may free human journalists from heavy tasks and reserve them for an extra level of coverage [21] (p. 5,6) (reports and features, basically) with a more added value and, following the old Berne Convention literal, a more "literary" approach. Anyway, there are some ways to alternatively attribute authorship, or related rights, to a natural person or a corporate entity, and in every case AIS-aided news should be attribute to someone.…”

“…Some of them, like Monok or RADAR, do not seem to need it to produce simple news items, with no great context. Artificial intelligence systems are not able to generate text of complex or non-predictable nature, a hypothesis placed by Ufarte and Manfredi [21]; or, as Belz says, "with a lot of unpredictability in the output" [20].…”

Artificial intelligence and journalism: Systematic review of scientific production in Web of Science and Scopus (2008-2019)

“…The arguments for introducing robots on editorial offices have been many: greater accuracy (Silverman, 2013), increase of production (Papadimitriou, 2016), objectivity (Graefe, 2016), the ability to add web content (Mittal & Kumaraguru, 2014;Starbird et al, 2010), customising information (Hwang, Pearce & Nanis, 2012;Newman et al, 2019;Slater & Rouner, 2002;Young & Hermida, 2015), detecting events of journalistic interest for later diffusion (Steiner, 2014) and fighting against disinformation (Flew, 2012), especially in news and journalistic briefs (Ufarte & Manfredi, 2019), but also in Tweets and graphics (Rojas Torrijos & Toural, 2019). Likewise, they are used to identify the management of profiles on social networks (Chu et al, 2010;Dickerson, Kagan & Subrahmanian, 2014;Ferrara et al, 2016;Tavares & Faisal, 2013) and adapt to the preferences of users (Keeney, 2015).…”

Oportunidades de la robotización en el periodismo local: el caso de 'Mittmedia'

“…La IA se define como la implantación de mecanismos informáticos que efectúan, mediante algoritmos, tareas llevadas a cabo hasta entonces por humanos (Barrat, 2013). Su aplicación al periodismo tiene lugar gracias al trabajo de profesionales de la información, que nutren estos sistemas para generar informaciones automáticas a partir de una programación previa (Anderson, 2013;Ufarte Ruiz y Manfredi Sánchez, 2019).…”