Automated Insights, a company that provides language generation software to The Associated Press and other organizations, announced Wednesday the news cooperative will use the software to produce thousands of stories about collegiate sports.
The Associated Press will begin publishing automatically generated sports stories this spring, beginning with Division I baseball, according to a press release.
This new partnership will allow AP to cover more college sports of interest to our members and their audiences,” said Barry Bedlan, AP’s deputy director of sports products. “This will mean thousands of more stories on the AP wire, which will remain unmatched in the industry. Every college sports town will have some level of coverage.
The Associated Press has been using Automated Insights software to generate earnings reports stories since July. As a result, The AP was able to produce ten times as many stories about earnings reports with “far fewer errors.”
In February, Automated Insights was acquired by Vista Equity Partners, which also owns sports data company STATS LLC. When the company announced its acquisition, CEO Robbie Allen told Poynter the company would increasingly focus on automating sports coverage.
“Much like what we did for the AP around earning reports, I think most if not all of sporting events coverage, at least in terms of writing previews of events and recaps, should be automated to some degree,” Allen told Poynter.
Correction: A previous version of this story said The Associated Press would begin producing automated basketball stories first. In fact, it will initially use the software to produce baseball stories.
Comments