Robot reporters or fast-food kiosks? Is this the way that journalism responds to rising wages and is turning to robot reporters instead of journalism?Which?
Beginning November 1 The Miami Herald’s top storyOne of the recent sales featured a home. A mansion in the Brickell area of Miami — located on the mainland overlooking Biscayne Bay, near the Port of Miami — sold for over $2 million. The article was not particularly interesting and was not very long. It was just a few words long and described the basics of the house, then provided a listing of similar properties in the area.
What was it that attracted the people to this banal listing, you ask? The first indicator is in the headline; a Miami newspaper listing for a property sold in Dade County felt the need to include the clarifying words “Florida Home…” The next detail was that it seems people became aware of something new, arriving on the landing page to read the writer — or, more specifically, the non-writer. Recently, it was revealed that the Miami Herald uses a robot for real estate announcements.
This is our top-read story of the day pic.twitter.com/p6zNf58jXS
— David Ovalle (@DavidOvalle305) November 1, 2021
This segment is located at the bottom of this piece and is almost as long as its feature.
The Miami Herald Bot is artificial intelligence software which analyzes structured data from major real estate data suppliers and then applies that information to templates designed by newsroom journalists. This article was created by the Miami Herald Bot. These and other methods are being explored by us to offer more value for subscribers and readers. To report bugs and errors, please go to [email protected]
It is becoming more than an experiment. The Miami Herald Bot has close to one hundred posts. You might not be able to understand all the messages, but they aren’t necessarily coherent. Later, one entry would need to be amended after it went to press with this clunky syntax: “The seller bought a property in 1997 on Brickell Avenue..” In another such posting, it declared an address to be in the Brickell section of town, when in fact the address was well west of the area.
You can be sure that they don’t have any robot editors.
The use of artificial intelligence in newspapers isn’t new. This tech has been used by many outlets for quite some time. They use it for news breaking and compilation. The New York Times recently covered this story. They estimated that Bloomberg News had used AI to produce up to one-third their news reports. This was mainly focused on corporate earnings reports. AI is used nationwide by The Associated Press for minor-league baseball game coverage.
This is all made more interesting by the fact that over the years, the Miami Herald has been particularly outspoken in its opposition to Governor Ron DeSantis. There were a lot of embarrassing, and questionable, reports about the governor. The paper is not shy in expressing its opposition to him, often in a laughably knee-jerk manner. Currently, the paper is on a quest to demonize DeSantis over his use of the term “jab”, in place of vaccines. Bring on the robots.
Given the amount of emotional conflict that is required to create such a controversy, perhaps a robotic battalion or writers would be a good idea for the paper. This all will depend on how biased the journalist who initially programmed the AI. Staffers inputted the language the bot used for its humorous real estate dispatches. It adds an entirely new element to the humiliating process of replacing your employee before you are laid off.
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