Robots already write news in Portugal too. They are interning at Lusa
Lusa has "hired" a robot to write its stock market opening and closing reports. But automation in journalism is far from new abroad. Meet the machines that write the news.
“From today, the news published by the Lusa agency on the opening and close of the Lisbon stock exchange will be produced automatically by a computer application.” The message went out at 7:16am last Monday, 18 November, and marked the arrival in Portugal of a trend that has been gaining more and more ground abroad.
Robots already replace humans on factory production lines, in companies’ customer service departments and in a range of other tasks that can be automated. Journalism does not escape that trend. Although many news stories require data analysis, contact with sources and information gathering in general, others, such as the opening and close of a stock market session, can be written by robots. That is the case in a number of countries, led by the US and the UK. But Lusa’s went into service last week, after a “long testing period”.
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 25 November 2019.