News automation: The publishers’ treasure trove

There’s an important discussion going on in our industry around the use of robots to produce journalism. Having worked in this field for several years now, we’ve heard sceptics question how it’s possible to build algorithms which create consistently reliable and correct articles. This concern is valid when the underlying data is collected by scraping the internet. But when you build your automated content on structured data sets, the risk of error is minimal.  

2018 has certainly been the year automated content – robot journalism – has had a real break-through in Swedish newsrooms. The majority of Swedish local media groups, as well as national giant Aftonbladet, daily publish automated editorial texts in collaboration with Swedish United Robots.

The 2019 edition of Schibsted’s much publicised yearly Future Report was published yesterday. We’re very happy to find robot journalism generally identified as a key trend for the future. And to find United Robots specifically featured, through our collaboration with Aftonbladet.