The previously unreported acquisition of Graphiq Inc. and its more than 100 employees has given Amazon a new Southern California outpost. It recently began looking to hire additional software developers and data associates in Santa Barbara to work on Alexa. Investors in Graphiq made out with more than they put in, according to a source, suggesting the deal was worth at least tens of millions of dollars. Another source estimated the deal's value at $50 million. Amazon and Graphiq declined to comment.

The world's oldest news gathering organization is getting a little help from a young tech startup to bring to life facts and figures for readers. The Associated Press and Graphiq, which specializes in using artificial intelligence to rapidly create interactive data-driven infographics, announced a new partnership Tuesday. Through the AP, Graphiq will distribute its library of more than 10 billion interactive charts and graphs (the company calls them "visualizations") to the wire service's thousands of news clients around the globe, the two companies told Inc. The partnership, whose financials were not disclosed, will make it easier for the AP to provide data infographics for more of its stories while exposing Graphiq to a worldwide user audience. "Today we're reaching hundreds of millions of readers a month, but the AP reaches half the world's population every day," Alex Rosenberg, Graphiq vice president, told Inc. Rosenberg noted that Graphiq will embed some of its staffers in AP newsrooms to be readily available throughout the news outlets' reporting process.

The rise of artificial intelligence and automation in journalism has been front and center in the news lately, from Narrative Science co-founder Kris Hammond's prediction that "a machine will win a Pulitzer one day" to Facebook's decision to automate its Trending Topics feed. Algorithms seem certain to play a growing role in the production and curation of news, but it remains unclear what exactly this trend will mean for journalism -- or for the human journalists who currently produce it. Celebrants argue that algorithms will simply take over journalism's most menial tasks, freeing up human journalists to tackle more advanced work. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, for example, called automation "crucial to the future of journalism," and New York magazine writer Kevin Roose described the introduction of automated reporting as "the best thing to happen to journalists in a long time." However, skeptics fear that robots may end up replacing journalists instead of helping them.