For some reason, the whole idea sends shivers down my spine:
Robots will help a national news agency to create up to 30,000 local news stories a month, with the help of human journalists and funded by a Google grant. The Press Association has won a €706,000 (£621,000) grant to run a news service with computers writing localised news stories.
The national news agency, which supplies copy to news outlets in the UK and Ireland, has teamed up with data-driven news start-up Urbs Media for the project, which aims to create “a stream of compelling local stories for hundreds of media outlets”.
Journalists will find stories in national open databases from sources including government departments, local councils and NHS trusts, and make “detailed story templates” for topics such as crime, health and employment. Multiple versions of the story will be created with Natural Language Software and will “scale up the mass localisation of news content”.