Robots are writing more of what we read on the internet.

Here's a scary fact that most SEO content creators may not want to face: AI-generated content is already happening. In 10 years, AI-generated content probably will be the norm. In 20 years, robot content creators might take over the reins entirely. "In 10 years the majority of content will be generated by software. In 20 years, humans will wonder why we wasted so much time on content creation. I can't see any other way around this." So, if you're a content creator, should you just give up now?

Do you remember when Siri first spoke to you? It was impressive and a little bit scary. But mostly it was entertaining. We all figured out Siri's limitations within a few minutes of messing around with her artificial intelligence (AI) functionality. But today, an update: We have AI like Alexa, which can deliver flowers to our spouses at work, or tell us how to say "pork belly" in Portuguese.

What would our computers tell us if we gave them a voice? We'll soon find out thanks to Natural Language Generation which gives computers a written opinion on virtually anything. For now, we must program their responses, but soon they'll form their own opinions and develop a creative voice. This may seem a long way off, so let's consider their progression as a writer in comparison to a human. A child progresses as a writer by starting with basic creative writing exercises: What did you do over summer break?

The Press Association, a UK news agency, received about $807,000 from the third round of Google's Digital News Initiative funding. Reporters and Data and Robots, or RADAR, an AI/human collaborative news site which will produce "a daily diet of compelling stories." RADAR is listed on the DNI site as a "large" project, with a goal towards providing a steady stream of ready-made content for smaller news sites: Using a combination of editorial expertise and automation, applied to the burgeoning supply of open data and the increasing sophistication of distribution tools, RADAR will provide a major enhancement to the local digital news ecosystem … This will provide a significant boost to the local media industry at a time when budgets are under increasing pressure – but when the public's interest in local news is as high as ever. My journalist brothers and sisters shouldn't worry, though, according to Press Association editor Pete Clifton. Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but RADAR allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually.

And at this juncture in the Internet's evolution it seems very plain, Dear Online Reader, that you are mostly being served a tsunami of content -- accelerated into your attention trough by click-dependent digital business models which require a steady stream of word fodder to engage eyeballs long enough to ambush them with ads. You can weep for the state of the written word -- and let's face it, a whole lot of content isn't even written these days; I mean why expend energy composing actual sentences when you can just livestream a melon being slow-ploded by rubber bands? The second option is what Israeli startup Articoolo has been busy doing. It's built an algorithm that can generate an article on a topic of your choice -- so long as it can be described in between two and five words. Just sum up your subject concisely, tell the machine how many words (max 500) to scribe on your behalf, and select whether you prefer "better readability" or "enhanced uniqueness".

At dawn on 17 March the inhabitants of Los Angeles were woken by a mild tremor. Less than three minutes later the Los Angeles Times website published an initial piece on the subject, at first sight a wire drafted in haste by a press agency: "A shallow magnitude 4.7 earthquake was reported Monday morning five miles [8km] from Westwood, California, according to the US Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 6.25am Pacific time at a depth of 5.0 miles. According to the USGS, the epicentre was six miles from Beverly Hills, California, seven miles from Universal City, California, seven miles from Santa Monica, California, and 348 miles from Sacramento, California. In the past 10 days, there have been no earthquakes magnitude 3.0 and greater centred nearby. This information comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service and this post was created by an algorithm written by the author."

We've covered robot writers before, but to date it has never been much of a concern for actual writers. Robots just aren't that good at doing what we do; although Microsoft's'Tay' did prove to be pretty great at going from zero to off-the-rails after dealing with some nasty Twitter comments -- something any writer can relate to. Until now, "robot writers" -- artificial intelligence programs taught to write -- were mainly only good at penning quick stories based on data-heavy reports. Box scores, stock reports, and the like were basically all the programs were capable of doing well. This year's edition of TNW Conference in Amsterdam includes some of the biggest names in tech.