Embracing Robotic Journalism To Face Industry 4.0

KUALA LUMPUR, April 10 (Bernama) -- As technology evolves, especially with industry 4.0, what could happen to the future of journalism? Two words: "Robotic Journalism". The use of a software or platform which automatically generates narratives using intelligent algorithm on a massive scale to sound like a person crafted each one of the news piece. Believe it or not, the technology has been here almost a decade and is now used by several media companies. China employed Artificial Intelligence writing robot Xiaomingbot, which pushed out hundreds of stories covering the Rio Olympic Games in 2016. Google, donated approximately 800 thousand dollars to UK's Press Association for its Data and Robots scheme (Radar). Though mainly used for newswires and online newspapers, in late 2017, the first robot-generated stories produced by Press Association have appeared in print in what is claimed to be a world-first for journalism. The Associated Press (AP) was one of the pioneer news agency to look into the technology back in 2014 for financial reporting. It was revealed that AP managed to generate 12 times more stories than it has while using manual reporting with less errors and greater efficiencies. However, the Los Angeles Times made headlines last year as its Quakebot reported a false magnitude 6.8 earthquake off the coast of Santa Barbara, California – proving that machines can make mistakes too. But how would these affect the future jobs of journalists as this technology is said to be able to save up almost 50 per cent to the cost of operations? An independent analyst Ken Doctor, who studies the news industry said, that the rise of robot reporting is a product of the times — both technologically and in terms of the troubled economics of the news industry. He said that the robots were just another tool for new journalism, as today journalism was becoming a more highly skilled job. He explained that the robots would not be competing with the journalists, but in fact would become their partners by preparing data-dense paragraphs that journalists can then supplement with their own analysis, producing a hybrid story that’s better than human efforts alone. Agreeing to this, a Korean "robot journalism" software start-ups, M-Robo, Chief Executive Officer, Ahn Sang Soon said, rather than journalist losing jobs, this service would enhance their efficiency. “I think that newspaper reporters will not lose their job, but these reporters may use the system coding about the substerior and then they would run how to work with robot journalist," says Soon. Whilst, robotic journalism is efficient for a fast story update, journalists should be doing what journalists do best: analysing, interviewing, investigating by using their expertise to comment and ask questions. Sportswriters Association of Malaysia (SAM) President, Ahmad Khawari Isa said, at the end of the day the audience are still human with emotional feeling. He is confident that jobs as journalists continue to be relevant if they know how to evolve and embrace the change. -- BERNAMA