The AP's New Baseball Reporter Is Not Human

The popular discussion around "robots writing the news" tends to presuppose that automation will displace human journalists. While that's certainly possible in some cases, the AP says it hasn't eliminated any reporting jobs as a result of its deals with Automated Insights. Rather, it says the automated earnings stories free journalists to focus on adding detail and context to the more newsworthy reports. And the automated sports recaps have allowed the agency to expand its coverage to events it had previously ignored. For instance, the AP did not previously offer recaps of most minor-league baseball games.