The Future of Writing? China's AI Reporter Published 450 Articles During Rio Olympics

With dwindling budgets that require big layoffs, you really can't fault the news industry if it wants to catch a break. And to that end (although this is not so awesome for the news industry's writers), a lot of media outlets are kind of going full AI. Case in point, The Washington Post threw its hat in the AI game when setting it's AI, "Heliograf," to cover the Olympics, writing basic stories and keeping tallies of medal counts. Search engine and news syndication service Toutiao has employed Xiaomingbot, an AI writing robot, to cover the Olympics. Get this: the robot was able to publish 450 articles over the course of the 15-day event.