Blog Post By: Emily Bangen, Baer Performance Marketing Intern
Artificial intelligence is a computer system that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence. This can include tasks such as decision making, language translation, or speech recognition. The abilities and the development of artificial intelligence have been growing over the past few years, and the technology is even starting to make its way into newsrooms. Below you will read about how newsrooms are starting to use artificial intelligence and how it may affect your media relations strategy.
How are newsrooms using artificial intelligence?
– Automatically-Suggested Content: When you are reading a story on a news website, other stories will appear around it that are similar to the story you are currently reading. This is produced on your page by artificial intelligence. The system can tell what you like to read and produces similar stories to keep you engaged on the news site.
– Real-Time Fact Checking: Since artificial intelligence is a computer system, it can easily check and scan for facts. A computer scanning the internet for facts is much faster than a person trying to scan the internet. This can be used for checking data and statistics or for identifying fake news stories. This helps reporters have accurate information quickly for their reports, preventing them from having to spend time researching or just blindly quoting someone else’s facts.
– Story Automation: With artificial intelligence, newsrooms can have stories written for them. Story automation can take information given to them and transform it into stories. This allows their news stories to be the most up to date as possible. It is commonly being used right now for sports results, election results, and financial reports.
This is not an all-inclusive list of ways a newsroom can use artificial intelligence. They are just a few of the main tactics being used. As the technology develops, the use of it will continue to grow, as well.
So, will the use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom affect your company and your media relations?
Yes, yes it will. First off, any information sent to a newsroom can be run through the system to check if it is accurate or not. You want to make sure any data or statistics included in your press releases are correct. Also, as the abilities of artificial intelligence grow, it could be used more for actual story writing. When this happens, it will be important to know who is reading your press release. If your press release is being sent through an artificial intelligence system, then you need to be writing it for a computer to turn into a story, rather than writing for a journalist to read. Artificial intelligence systems are more likely to scan for facts and data while a human would be more attracted to emotionally-driven stories.
Be sure to watch closely as artificial intelligence develops, and stayed tuned for how it will change the ways of newsrooms and media relations across the globe.
Sources:
https://insights.ap.org/industry-trends/report-how-artificial-intelligence-will-impact-journalism
https://www.quora.com/How-can-artificial-intelligence-be-used-in-the-newsroom
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/meet-buzzbot?utm_term=.yq7N0BKl6#.bq1RJ61Qw
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/fake-news-still-problem-ai-solution-ncna848276
