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lucyariablog · 6 years

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Content Creation Robots Are Here [Examples]

How much will the evolving landscape of AI impact content creation?

I had a conversation with BuzzSumo co-founder Steve Rayson who said writing algorithms are available for purchase, have been bought, and are in use by major platforms. And, they are creating well-written, data-backed articles, he said.

I was surprised. I knew the AI landscape was evolving in the industry: But just how much would it really affect content creation? I took a data-driven look at the reality.

How much has AI been implemented behind the scenes for content creation? And what does this technology cost?

The key phrases behind content-writing robots you’ll see a lot – intelligent narratives, natural language generation (NLG), and automated storytelling technology. Now, let’s meet the writing AIs behind three leading publications.

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Narrative Science and Quill

The biggest player in the content AI field could truly be Narrative Science, which created NLG software called Quill.

It describes itself as: “Humanizing data like never before, with technology that interprets your data and transforms it into ‘intelligent narratives’ at speed and scale.”

Narrative Science started in 2010 as a Northwestern University experiment turning baseball box scores into traditional stories. In 2011, it raised over $6 million to study the landscape of how to create “human-free stories” (such an oxymoron to say). In 2013, it raised another $11.5 million for further development. Today, Quill can generate news stories, industry reports, and even headlines without human intervention. It’s limited to the confines of news reports and data-backed content, but it can generate that type of content at scale.

Narrative Science “rents” Quill mostly to financial clients for whom it can create 10- to 15-page financial reports in a matter of moments (what would take a writer possibly weeks to put together). MIT Technology Review reports Quill is churning out over a million words a day. It creates content for clients like Groupon, Forbes, T. Rowe Price, Credit Suisse, and USAA.

Adaptation to tone and voice

Client companies can inform Quill of the style of language, tone, and angle to use. That goes beyond what much automated content software has been able to do. For example, if an audience is known to love a certain team, Quill can write a story that softens the blow when that team loses. Crazy!

You can inform Quill writing algorithm of language, tone, & angle to use to create content. @JuliaEMcCoy Click To Tweet

It certainly can’t write a creative story (yet), but here’s a look at a few sentences written by Quill around the performance of mutual funds:

The energy sector was the main contributor to relative performance, led by stock selection in energy equipment and services companies. In terms of individual contributors, a position in energy equipment and services company Oceaneering International was the largest contributor to returns. Stock selection also contributed to relative results in the health care sector. Positioning in health care equipment and supplies industry helped most.

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Cost of content creation

Narrative Science launched a version called Quill Engage for free, but all it can do is translate Google Analytics into plain English for you or your clients. That’s it. Here’s an example of what that looks like. (It reminds me of a simple SEMrush audit report.)

Though Narrative Science doesn’t publish pricing for Quill, I looked at Quora where one person reported a tier pricing system and shared numbers that were in the ballpark of what a few people in the industry confirmed to me. Pricing is based on story types. One story type – one interpretation of one dataset – could generate up to 100,000 stories and cost $70,000 a year. While three story types would be $175,000 a year.

The Washington Post and Heliograf

In the past year, The Washington Post has published more than 850 stories created by its in-house automated storytelling technology called Heliograf – although, more realistically, it may be better named in-house reporting technology because it churns out news articles and social media posts.

Some of the content it writes are basic tweets like this one:

Landon beat Whitman 34-0; https://t.co/V6zVPi7a9O @LandonSports @koachkuhn

— WashPost HS Sports (@WashPostHS) September 2, 2017

Other content was complete stories. (Again, “story” is a stretch – it’s more the style of a journalistic report). Heliograf supplemented The Washington Post reporters covering the Rio Olympics, and created 300 news stories and alerts for the event. The Post also has used Heliograf to cover hundreds of political races.

Cost of content creation

Today, The Washington Post sells Heliograf’s technology through Arc Publishing, which starts at $10,000 a month and can increase to over $150,000 a month. And, The Wall Street Journal reports, the CIO has said that the profitability is astronomical – 60 to 80% margins.

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The Associated Press, Automated Insights, and Wordsmith

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s oldest news networks, was founded in 1846 when five newspapers from New York City funded a pony express-type route to bring news of the Mexican war faster than the U.S. Post Office could. It’s crazy to think that today robots are writing thousands of the AP’s news stories.

The AP saw Automated Insights as an answer to combat the low output of corporate earnings reports by its writers. With the AI technology, output increased by 12 times. With the help of Automated Insights, AP now produces 3,700 quarterly earnings stories, which are brief. Here’s an example.

.@AP used @AInsights software to write 3,700 corporate earnings stories a quarter, says @JuliaEMcCoy. Click To Tweet

Automated Insights could hold the very keys to the castle for making content robots accessible to everyone, including B2B companies and small to medium-size businesses. Here’s why. Automated Insights has gone on to create an insanely smart content robot, Wordsmith, which it calls “the world’s first public natural language generation platform.” The catch? A lot of human content work is required for the algorithm to work.

Here’s how Wordsmith works:

Add your data to the software (tell it a few data points for a “story”).

Write a template for the story.

Preview the output of the NLG software and edit it.

Publish your half-robot/half-human-created story (yes, straight from the app).

You must first work within the software to set up rules, a template, and data points. But once you do, the content can be created. Here’s an example from Splinter’s Kevin Roose:

“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!”

That’s darn good copy for a bot. The writing skills are basic, thus an experienced journalist could put it into better context – to tell a more effective story.

The direction of Wordsmith – a mutation of bot and human – could be a direction for marketers. Hundreds of businesses have invested in using Wordsmith, including Allstate, Microsoft, and Yahoo! The software generates over 1.5 billion pieces of content per year. Plus, it can develop content in more than 20 languages. That’s not even the crazy part yet. The API is “milli-second” fast. You read that right. It can generate content in seconds what would take a team of writers possibly weeks to develop.

The direction of @AInsights Wordsmith, a mutation of bot & human, could be direction for marketers.… Click To Tweet

Cost of content creation

Access to Wordsmith starts at $2,000 a month with an annual contract. Managed services, which are recommended, are an additional fee. Set-up costs for each story’s data points also are an additional charge.

More content robots

Is your mind blown yet about content AI? There are more content robots on the scene. The Los Angeles Times created the QuakeBot, which writes stories when it picks up data from the U.S. Geological Survey after an earthquake happens. The robot even has its own Twitter handle.

Google has paid over $800,000 for the Digital News Initiative being developed by the U.K. news agency, The Press Association, as it develops RADAR or Reporters and Data and Robots to focus on local news content creation. A novel co-authored by AI won a literary award in Japan and the judges weren’t told if the entrants were human or not. (It looks like the AI compiled the words, while the human co-author came up with the plot and character details.)

How brands can use bots for content creation

Automated Insights shares a case study of a brand using its AI to create content. DigitalSTROM is a smart home system that can program your electronics to follow your patterns of life – coffee made for you before you get up, lights turned on when your alarm goes off, or thermostat turned up shortly before you’re scheduled to come home from work.

DigitalSTROM turned to writing algorithms to produce custom, engaging in-app reports for users, and even to construct email communication sent to users. Working with a customized version of Wordsmith to produce a natural language generation-based API, it plugged the API into its app to create customized, original on-demand reports for customers, using variables and rules they set up beforehand. For instance, customers would ask the app about their home energy usage data for the last 24 hours, and Wordsmith would produce a well-read narrative from digitalSTROM’s data.

Automated Insights also says its Wordsmith tool can replace the monotony of research and structured data compilation that a human would have to do in the content creation process.

For instance, data-rich content production like trend reports and market summaries can now be done by the data-driven writing software. Feed Wordsmith the data about a trend, market, or even the performance of a campaign, and the software can create a well-written report, original, and readable. With this type of content creation, marketers can spend more time being creative than digging through rows and columns of figures to get an income report done.

Data-rich #content production can now be done by software, says @JuliaEMcCoy. Read more >> Click To Tweet

Today, it’s fairly easy to integrate AI content creation into your content marketing – think of the above metrics and how much monotonous research work AI can cut from the creation process.

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Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Want to get smarter about how to use intelligent content in your content marketing? Plan today to attend the Intelligent Content Conference March 20-22 in Las Vegas. Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Content Creation Robots Are Here [Examples] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/11/content-creation-robots-examples/

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thisishowyouletgoandfindyou-blog · 7 years

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To Stay Married, Embrace Change

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Modern Love

By ADA CALHOUN APRIL 21, 2017

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A couple of years ago, it seemed as if everyone I knew was on the verge of divorce.

“He’s not the man I married,” one friend told me.

“She didn’t change, and I did,” said another.

And then there was the no-fault version: “We grew apart.”

Emotional and physical abuse are clear-cut grounds for divorce, but they aren’t the most common causes of failing marriages, at least the ones I hear about. What’s the more typical villain? Change.

Feeling oppressed by change or lack of change; it’s a tale as old as time. Yet at some point in any long-term relationship, each partner is likely to evolve from the person we fell in love with into someone new — and not always into someone cuter or smarter or more fun. Each goes from rock climber to couch potato, from rebel to middle manager, and from sex crazed to sleep obsessed.

Sometimes people feel betrayed by this change. They fell in love with one person, and when that person doesn’t seem familiar anymore, they decide he or she violated the marriage contract. I have begun to wonder if perhaps the problem isn’t change itself but our susceptibility to what has been called the “end of history” illusion.

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“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” the Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert said in a 2014 TED talk called “The Psychology of Your Future Self.” He described research that he and his colleagues had done in 2013: Study subjects (ranging from 18 to 68 years old) reported changing much more over a decade than they expected to.

In 2015, I published a book about where I grew up, St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan. In doing research, I listened to one person after another claim that the street was a shadow of its former self, that all the good businesses had closed and all the good people had left. This sentiment held true even though people disagreed about which were the good businesses and who were the good people.

Nostalgia, which fuels our resentment toward change, is a natural human impulse. And yet being forever content with a spouse, or a street, requires finding ways to be happy with different versions of that person or neighborhood.

Because I like to fix broken things quickly and shoddily (my husband, Neal, calls my renovation aesthetic “Little Rascals Clubhouse”), I frequently receive the advice: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

Such underreacting may also be the best stance when confronted by too much or too little change. Whether or not we want people to stay the same, time will bring change in abundance.

A year and a half ago, Neal and I bought a place in the country. We hadn’t been in the market for a house, but our city apartment is only 500 square feet, and we kept admiring this lovely blue house we drove by every time we visited my parents. It turned out to be shockingly affordable.

So now we own a house. We bought furniture, framed pictures and put up a badminton net. We marveled at the change that had come over us. Who were these backyard-grilling, property-tax-paying, shuttlecock-batting people we had become?

When we met in our 20s, Neal wasn’t a man who would delight in lawn care, and I wasn’t a woman who would find such a man appealing. And yet here we were, avidly refilling our bird feeder and remarking on all the cardinals.

Neal, who hadn’t hammered a nail in all the years I’d known him, now had opinions on bookshelves and curtains, and loved going to the hardware store. He whistled while he mowed. He was like an alien. But in this new situation, I was an alien, too — one who knew when to plant bulbs and how to use a Crock-Pot, and who, newly armed with CPR and first aid certification, volunteered at a local camp. Our alien selves were remarkably compatible.

Several long-married people I know have said this exact line: “I’ve had at least three marriages. They’ve just all been with the same person.” I’d say Neal and I have had at least three marriages: Our partying 20s, child-centric 30s and home-owning 40s.

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Then there’s my abbreviated first marriage. Nick and I met in college and dated for a few months before dropping out and driving cross-country. Over the next few years, we worked a series of low-wage jobs. On the rare occasions when we discussed our future, he said he wasn’t ready to settle down because one day, he claimed, he would probably need to “sow” his “wild oats” — a saying I found tacky and a concept I found ridiculous.

When I told Neal about this years later, he said, “Maybe you found it ridiculous because you’d already done it.”

It’s true that from ages 16 to 19 I had a lot of boyfriends. But with Nick, I became happily domestic. We adopted cats. I had changed in such a way that I had no problem being with just one person. I was done changing and thought he should be, too. Certainly, I thought he should not change into a man who sows oats.

When we got married at the courthouse so he could get his green card (he was Canadian), I didn’t feel different the next day. We still fell asleep to “Politically Incorrect” with our cats at our feet as we always had.

We told anyone who asked that the marriage was no big deal, just a formality so the government wouldn’t break us up. But when pressed, it was hard to say what differentiated us from the truly married beyond the absence of a party.

When I grew depressed a few months later, I decided that he and our pseudo-marriage were part of the problem. After three years of feeling like the more committed person, I was done and asked him to move out. When he left, I felt sad but also thrilled by the prospect of dating again. A couple of years later, I met Neal.

Recently, I asked Nick if we could talk. We hadn’t spoken in a decade. He lives in London now, so we Skyped. I saw that he looked almost exactly as he had at 22, though he’d grown a long beard. We had a pleasant conversation. Finally, I asked him if he thought our marriage counted.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it counts.”

We were married, just not very well. The marriage didn’t mean much to us, and so when things got rough, we broke up. I had been too immature to know what I was getting into. I thought passion was the most important thing. When my romantic feelings left, I followed them out the door. It was just like any breakup, but with extra paperwork.

Nick now works at a European arts venue. He’s unmarried. I wouldn’t have predicted his life or his facial hair. I don’t regret our split, but if we had stayed married, I think I would have liked this version of him.

My hair is long and blond now. When Neal and I met, it was dyed black and cut to my chin. When I took to bleaching it myself, it was often orange, because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Now I weigh about 160 pounds. When I left the hospital after being treated for a burst appendix, I weighed 140. When I was nine months pregnant and starving every second, I weighed 210. I have been everything from size 4 to 14. I have been the life of the party and a drag. I have been broke and loaded, clinically depressed and radiantly happy. Spread out over the years, I’m a harem.

How can we accept that when it comes to our bodies (and everything else, for that matter), the only inevitability is change? And what is the key to caring less about change as a marriage evolves — things like how much sex we’re having and whether or not it’s the best sex possible?

One day in the country, Neal and I heard a chipmunk in distress. It had gotten inside the house and was hiding under the couch. Every few minutes, the creature let out a high-pitched squeak. I tried to sweep it out the door to safety with a broom, but it kept running back at my feet.

“Wow, you’re dumb,” I said to it.

“I got this,” Neal said, mysteriously carrying a plastic cereal bowl. “Shoo it out from under there.”

I did, and the chipmunk raced through the living room. Neal, like an ancient discus thrower, tossed the bowl in a beautiful arc, landing it perfectly atop the scampering creature. He then slid a piece of cardboard under the bowl and carried the chipmunk out into the bushes, where he set it free.

“That was really impressive,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

To feel awed by a man I thought I knew completely: It’s a shock when that happens after so many years. And a boon. That one fling of a bowl probably bought us another five years of marriage.

Ada Calhoun, who lives in New York, is the author of a forthcoming memoir, “Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give,” from which this essay is adapted.

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A version of this article appears in print on April 23, 2017, on Page ST5 of the New York edition with the headline: To Stay Married, Embrace Change. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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