A robotic reporter still lacks creativity, but it can already replace human journalists in several areas

Abstract

Automated journalism is experiencing rapid advancements, prompting concerns among certain journalists who fear potential job displacement by robotic reporters. Conversely, there is a cohort of journalists embracing this progress, viewing the involvement of robotic reporters as a time-efficient measure and an avenue to engage in more creative forms of journalism. This article aims to explore topics in Czech Republic news that lend themselves to automation based on perplexity. Currently, the robotic reporter can generate articles in few domains (e.g., stock market news, fuel prices news, and traffic accident reports), while further exploration is underway for other areas. However, generating e.g. cultural news through automation remains challenging due to its less recurrent nature, as evidenced by perplexity measurements reflecting text complexity. Perplexity method can be used to determine which journalistic area is suitable for automated text. In this article, we focus on the Czech environment and the possibilities of automation and the reaction of selected Czech journalists who encounter automated texts in newsrooms. While automated journalism demonstrates superiority over human journalists in certain aspects, it still falls short in terms of creativity, an aspect where artificial intelligence remains unable to replace humans. Nevertheless, the robotic reporter can serve as an invaluable assistant to editors and reporters in their work. Consequently, the newsroom landscape is evolving, accommodating the integration of automated content editors.