Someday, this story may be written by a computer

If you write marketing or advertising text for a living, you may want to get a second job skill. That's because software that writes text is here, and it is tackling a growing list of assignments. Several companies offer software that regularly churns out thousands of stories and reports based on structured data, like financial results. Ads that literally write themselves emerged last week, as IBM announced a new service based on its Watson supercomputer. A program called Quakebot has generated earthquake stories for the LA Times.