Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. It took just four batters at George Steinbrenner Field before a fan yelled "C'mon, blue!" toward home plate umpire Kaleb Devier after two consecutive close pitches were called balls. Never mind that a computer was making the calls. Didn't matter on Tuesday night as the Tampa Tarpons took on the Dunedin Blue Jays.

Umpires will have a little help behind home plate in some minor league games this season – from a "robot ump." Major League Baseball announced Thursday that select games in the Low-A Southeast will use a robot to help call balls and strikes. The use of the technology, called the Automatic Ball-Strike System, will also "ensure a consistent strike zone is called, and determine the optimal strike zone for the system," according to MLB. The robot's use is one of a number of experimental rules announced Thursday, which the league said are "designed to increase action on the basepaths, create more balls in play, improve the pace and length of games, and reduce player injuries." MLB has often tried out rules in the minor leagues it is considering for the majors.

First it was whimsical poems, then full-length movies. But, now artificial intelligence is writing sports articles. The Associated Press announced it is expanding the publication's coverage to include Minor League Baseball and will use automated software to cover the 10,000 games. This AI reporter is capable of analyzing data from the games, pulling out the most important highlights to formulate well-constructed and informative stories. The Associated Press announced it is expanding the publication's coverage to include Minor League Baseball and will use automated software to cover the 10,000 games, like the Altoona Curve.

The Associated Press has already used its automated reporting platform Wordsmith to generate things that its human writers also cover, like quarterly earnings and college sports, but now its "robot journalists" are branching out to a new sector -- Minor League Baseball. The publisher will now cover the US minor leagues, feeding data from MLB Advanced Media into the the same software it has used to produce automatic stories for the last two years. Human reporters were used by the AP to cover some Minor League games in 2006, but couldn't cover the full slate of teams and leagues. By using Automated Insights' software and MLBAM's data, the AP can now report on games it previously couldn't without a staff of hundreds of dedicated journalists, the Wordsmith platform covering 142 MLB-affiliated teams across 13 leagues. The AP tried covering Minor League Baseball in 2006 but couldn't report on as many games Automated Insights' software has proved itself accurate in its reporting on other topics so far, but AP's sports division spent a year testing the software to make sure the Minor League write-ups it spat out made sense for fans.

The rise of the machines continues this week with news that the Associated Press (AP) is expanding its baseball coverage through automated stories generated by algorithms. The New York-based nonprofit news agency has ramped up its partnership with Automated Insights, a Durham, Carolina-based company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze big data and transform it into stories. The AP has worked with Automated Insights for a number of years already. Indeed, more than 3,000 computer-generated corporate earnings reports have been created over the past couple of years based on data supplied by Zacks Investment Research, and the AP has used automation in sports reports too. The organization also participated in a 5.5 million funding round into Automated Insights back in 2014.

The Associated Press on Thursday announced that it is now covering Minor League Baseball games nationally using artificial intelligence and software from Automated Insights, and data from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the official statistics provider for Minor League Baseball. Automatically generated stories cover games that AP Sports' human writers weren't reporting on or traveling to anyway, including: Triple-A, Double-A and Class A games, across 142 MLB-affiliated teams and 13 leagues. So if you're worried that technology is "stealing jobs" from promising sports writers, rest easy. According to the AP's deputy director of sports products, Barry Bedlan, the AP actually hired automation experts to develop, manage and integrate MiLB coverage. The move was not exactly unexpected, either.

The Associated Press on Thursday announced that it is now covering Minor League Baseball games nationally using artificial intelligence and software from Automated Insights, and data from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the official statistics provider for Minor League Baseball.

The Associated Press on Thursday announced that it is now covering Minor League Baseball games nationally using artificial intelligence and software from Automated Insights, and data from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the official statistics provider for Minor League Baseball. Automatically generated stories cover games that AP Sports' human writers weren't reporting on or traveling to anyway, including: Triple-A, Double-A and Class A games, across 142 MLB-affiliated teams and 13 leagues. So if you're worried that technology is "stealing jobs" from promising sports writers, rest easy. According to the AP's deputy director of sports products, Barry Bedlan, the AP actually hired automation experts to develop, manage and integrate MiLB coverage. The move was not exactly unexpected, either.

The rise of the machines continues this week with news that the Associated Press (AP) is expanding its baseball coverage through automated stories generated by algorithms. The New York-based nonprofit news agency has ramped up its partnership with Automated Insights, a Durham, Carolina-based company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze and transform big data into stories. The AP has worked with Automated Insights for a number of years already, with more than 3,000 computer-generated corporate earnings reports created over the past couple of years based on data supplied by Zacks Investment Research, and it has used automation in sports reports too. The AP also participated in a 5.5 million funding round into Automated Insights back in 2014. Automated Insights offers its Wordsmith A.I. platform to a number of big-name media companies, including Yahoo, and to the casual observer it may be difficult to know that a report wasn't written by a human.

First it was whimsical poems, then full-length movies. But, now artificial intelligence is writing sports articles. The Associated Press announced it is expanding the publication's coverage to include Minor League Baseball and will use automated software to cover the 10,000 games. This AI reporter is capable of analyzing data from the games, pulling out the most important highlights to formulate a well-constructed and informative stories. The Associated Press announced it is expanding the publication's coverage to include Minor League Baseball and will use automated software to cover the 10,000 games, like the Altoona Curve.