How to Teach a Robot to Write

In the case of AP style, a lot of the work has already been done. Every Associated Press article already comes with a clear, direct opening and a structure that spirals out from there. All the algorithm needs to do is code in the same reasoning a reporter might employ. Algorithms detect the most volatile or newsworthy shift in a given earnings report and slot that in as the lede. Circling outward, the program might sense that a certain topic has already been covered recently and decide it's better to talk about something else. Automated Insights CEO Robbie Allen, the man responsible for the system, describes it as more complicated than it looks. "It can’t be Madlibs. If it starts to sound automated, it gets stilted or highly repetitive," he says. "It’s very complicated to avoid that."

The staffers who keep the copy fresh are scribes and coders in equal measure. (Allen says he looks for "stats majors who worked on the school paper.") They're not writers in the traditional sense — most of the language work is done beforehand, long before the data is available — but each job requires close attention. For sports articles, the Automated Insights team does all its work during the off-season and then watches the articles write themselves from the sidelines, as soon as each game’s results are available. "I’m often quite surprised by the result," says Joe Procopio, the company’s head of product engineering. "There might be four or five variables that determine what that lead sentence looks like." Even if you wrote the program yourself, it’s hard to know what’s coming.

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