Written language generation was once thought to be a task humans were uniquely qualified to do. Today, with advances in artificial intelligence and specifically natural language generation, AI is proving its expertise with all kinds of content types from news reports to captions and social media posts to financial reports.

1. AI Can Now Write
Amazing Content -
What Does That Mean
For Humans?

2. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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IntroductionIntroduction
If you believe anything can and will be automated with artificial intelligence (AI),
then you might not be surprised to know how many notable media organizations
including The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, Washington Post, and
Yahoo! Sports already use AI to generate content. The Press Association, for
example, can now produce 30,000 local news stories a month using AI.
Artificial Intelligence Can Now Write
Amazing Content –
What Does That Mean For Humans?

3. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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IntroductionIntroduction
You might think that these are formulaic who, what, where and when stories and
you are right, some of them certainly are. But, today, AI-written content has
expanded beyond formulaic writing to more creative writing endeavors such as
poetry and novels.
Artificial Intelligence Can Now Write
Amazing Content –
What Does That Mean For Humans?

4. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
How Does AI Write Content?
The software process that automatically creates a written narrative from data is called natural
language generation (NLG). It's already used for a variety of content generation needs in our
world including business intelligence dashboards, business data reports, personalized email,
and in-app messaging communication, client financial portfolio updates and more.
The first step in NLG is to define what format of content is desired. Each content type from
social media posts to financial reports to poetry has a unique writing style and structure. The
narrative design, also known as the template or narrative type, is constructed by the end-user,
the NLG solution or by the software provider. Some of the NLG tools available include Quill
from Narrative Science, Amazon’s Polly, Wordsmith from Automated Insights, and Google’s
Text-to-Speech while some organizations have created in-house tools such as Heliograf at the
Washington Post.
As with any artificial intelligence solution, ownership and access to data are crucial. In the case
of NLG, structured data is fed into the software and is processed through the "conditional
logic" that's part of the narrative design. The goal is for the output to sound like a human-
generated each piece of content.

5. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Why Are Organizations Investing In Natural
Language Generation?
As with other implementations of AI, natural language generation allows organizations to
process large datasets and create more efficiently than humans can. Organizations who have
implemented an NLG solution can produce thousands of more narratives in a sliver of the
time it would take humans to write each one individually.
In addition, NLG enables complex personalization at scale. This can have significant service
and overall experience benefits for customers. If your company has a workplace savings
scheme, think of the 401K portfolio summaries you receive quarterly. These are likely
generated by NLG, but it is highly personalized, speaks directly to you and uses your unique
set of information.
Natural language processing can also make data more insightful and easier to understand for
humans who are not data experts. While charts and graphs are visually appealing, it may be a
challenge for some people, especially those who aren’t used to analyzing data, to extract the
important message they should receive from the visualization. NLG can further engage the
reader who is looking at the information with written summaries and key insights to
accompany the charts.

6. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Examples of NLG Used Today
To cut research time and costs, German bank Commerzbank is using artificial intelligence to
create equity research reports. This process is not yet completely automated, but the
technology is already able to perform about 75 percent of what a human equity analyst would
have done.
There are several automated journalism applications being used in newsrooms around the
globe from speeding up research to fact-checking, comment monitoring, streamlining
workflow, eliminating fake news and, yes, even writing content. The Associated Press is using
AI to write thousands of sports reports. Following the narrative design, the software can scan
the data and determine the insights from a game that are important for the reader to know.
Knowing the lingo is important for the content to sound natural. The Washington Post uses its
in-house NLG tool to create news articles and social media posts.
Many financial institutions are churning out 10- to 15-page financial reports in an instant by
using Narrative Science’s NLG platform Quill. It also creates content for Groupon, Forbes,
USAA and more.

7. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Examples of NLG Used Today
Artificial intelligence helps create text summarizations, short and coherent versions of longer
documents. This requires the algorithm to understand the source document and then distill
the meaning and important details in a fluent summary.
Natural language generation has now been used to create an almost award-winning novel,
The Day a Computer Writes a Novel, as well as a Jack Kerouac-inspired narration of a road trip
and poetry. While there are still some glitches to work out before there will be full confidence
that machines can actually write with the same creativity and ingenuity as humans, these
developments can certainly make you ponder what creative endeavours will be uniquely
human and what constitutes quality writing.

8. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Machine or Human?
Do you think you will be able to identify content that was created by a bot? Try to guess if a
bot wrote this poetry. You can also take this quiz from the New York Times to see if you can
determine if you’re reading content written by a human or a bot.
Ready to try AI content for yourself? All you need to do is give this AI writer a headline, and it
will do all the research for you!

9. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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