To learn how actual news editors write headlines, Primer's system read more than 1 million news articles and the headlines they were paired with -- but only those where the headline was made up entirely of words found in the story. Once trained, it can read a new article and string together the best possible series of words to turn into a headline, according to Primer. In what Primer director of science John Bohannon calls a "headline Turing Test," evaluators were asked to rate computer-generated headlines against the originals -- without knowing which is which. In its final form, Primer tied or beat out humans more than half the time, the company said. To learn how actual news editors write headlines, Primer's system read more than 1 million news articles and the headlines they were paired with -- but only those where the headline was made up entirely of words found in the story.