We should begin this post by giving our readers reassurances that the following was written by an actual human being. This may seem like an odd caveat, one that 20 years ago would have signaled you were about to read a particularly trippy piece of science fiction, but it’s one that apparently needs to be added these days.
After all, machines have already taken over so many other industries – why not writing? Because writing and creating are uniquely human traits, you might argue. Because you can program a robot to run a drill press or bolt together an automobile chassis, but you can’t program it to craft a play on words or connect abstract concepts in any kind of meaningful or insightful way.
You might argue that, and you might be wrong.
The Current Software
Advancements in artificial intelligence have created sophisticated bots fully capable of researching, writing and posting a story with very little by way of human involvement.
One of the biggest players in the arena is Quill, a natural language generation (NLG) software created by Narrative Science. The product of two programmers named Stuart Frankel and Kris Hammond, Quill was originally created to build sports content based off nothing more than a game’s box scores. It succeeded, and the pair quickly looked beyond sports to general content. The result was a $6 million drive to replace writers with AI to create what they alarmingly call “human-free” stories.
Fortunately (at least for the human writers among us) this platform’s forays into the non-sports world seem to be limited so far to the financial sector, helping companies like T. Rowe Price, Credit Suisse, and USAA synthesize mountains of data into actionable reports.
But Quill is far from the only player in the game. News outlets have already begun leaning on AI for simple reporting and generating social media posts based on concepts. The biggest one among those is Washington Post’s home-grown AI, Heliograf, which snagged 850 bylines from human writers in the past year.
How Does it fit into Content Marketing?
As with Quill, we see Heliograf being used at first to cover sports stories. It debuted during the paper’s coverage of the Rio Olympics, and was soon being used to cover D.C.-area sports. It didn’t take long for WaPo to see the potential of their new software, and it was quickly adapted to political reporting, covering 50 different races during this past election cycle.
But could this software, developed to automate simpler reporting tasks, be used for content marketing?
So far the content marketing world is split on whether or not automation could work outside of a sports and newswriting context. Writing in Chief Content Officer Magazine, Jay Acunzo wrote, “You can’t rip out the human component to content and automate the core competency, which is producing media and telling stories.”
But then, he does have the obvious bias of being a human writer in a world that doesn’t seem like it needs that anymore. Speaking as a counterpoint, CCO Magazine Managing Editor Ann Rockley posits that humans may still do the heavy lifting of creating, but robots will be invaluable in tailoring that content to specific channels, letting it spread out farther and easier. This could be especially important to smaller business.
“Everyone struggles with it you might find you’re overstretched,” she wrote. “But if you incorporate intelligent content strategies to multiply the reach of your content, you can be a so-called small company with a big footprint.”
And that could be how it starts for content marketing. One company, Automated Insights, has created a software platform called Wordsmith to be the world’s first “public natural language generation platform.”
Like the other two, it’s being used largely to synthesize financial reports (the AP used it to generate 3,700 stories based on quarterly reports. Here’s one.) but unlike the other two, the company behind it sees the potential for content marketing. They recently opened the software up to the public, expanding its horizons beyond news generation.
How is it Used Right Now?
Like the other two, it’s being used largely to synthesize financial reports (the AP used it to generate 3,700 stories based on quarterly reports. Here’s one.) but unlike the other two, the company behind it sees the potential for content marketing. They recently opened the software up to the public, expanding its horizons beyond news generation.
Content generators were quick to seize on the opportunity, with one enterprising blogger using the software to create seven blog posts in under three seconds. By programming in what the final copy should read based on a series of data points, Kevin Roose was able to generate copy like this without breaking a sweat.
“Bad news, homeowners. In the last month, home prices in Phoenix Metro Area have fallen. Overall, 3,214 houses were sold in Phoenix over the last 30 days, with Phoenix County leading the way with 3,032 sales.
Potential buyers take note: the median sale price in Phoenix fell to $424,000, while the available housing inventory rose.
There are now 3 months of home inventory left in Phoenix.
Go find a bargain, buyers!”
Which… is shockingly human sounding. And that’s just the tip of the artificially generated iceberg. Automated Insights has courted companies from Allstate to Microsoft to use Wordsmith in creating content, resulting in something along the lines of 1.5 billion pieces of content a year.
And they’ve begun actively going after content marketers, publishing pieces like this to illustrate to them the things they can do with Wordsmith. (We can neither confirm nor deny whether the piece just linked was written by a person or not).
So for the time being, human writers may still just have a place in this world. This artificial intelligence can take in data sets and spit out usable content, or take human-generated content and automate the process of disseminating across several channels, but it can’t create.
At least for the time being.
Of course, you can’t trust robots for everything. For expert insight into solutions that can help your small business thrive, give us a call at 904.359.4318, or fill out our contact form.
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