By Rachel Wingard (@Raychiller)
Cookerly PR (@CookerlyPR)
June 1, 2015

http://cookerly.com/thoughts/are-we-automating-the-death-of-public-relations/

In her blog, Cookerly PR Account Supervisor Rachel Wingard discusses the company Automated Insights, and its new program, WordSmith, that automatically generates news stories. The program is currently in use developing sports and financial stories for the Associated Press and Yahoo.

NPR recently tested out the program, pitting it against one of its “highly credentialed veteran reporters”, giving them each the same financial report at the same time. The reporter wrote a 121-word story in 7+ minutes, while WordSmith came in at just under 2 minutes.

Wingard then analyzes whether faster is necessarily better, and what this program (and automated writing in general) may mean for PR professionals. She sees it as an opportunity for both sides of the media (PR professionals and journalists) to really concentrate on producing high quality and creative content that engages the reader, and to focus on bringing the personal touch to our writing. Making sure the element of a human touch and uniqueness is present is necessary to distinguish our capabilities from that of a machine.