What we’re talking about: the latest about news automation

Swedish local media group NWT Media have started publishing robot journalism provided by United Robots, which means we now deliver automated content to all local media groups in the country. The NWT Media agreement includes automatically generated content in sports, real estate, traffic, weather, company registrations & bankruptcies as well as the editorial news alerts service Breaking Desk. The sports content service also includes Q&A, United Robots’ platform for automatic retrieval and publication of coaches’ comments.

The collaboration between Norwegian publisher Bergens Tidende (Schibsted) and United Robots around automated real estate content – a huge reader revenue success – has now generated nominations in 3 categories of the 2021 INMA Global Media Awards. Five percent of all article conversions at BT now happen through the real estate articles.

As many traditional newsrooms around the world are beginning to acknowledge the importance of internally reflecting the society they are covering, growing numbers of journalists choose to go independent. At this point in time however, the world of independent journalism is also lacking in diversity, the space being heavily male dominated. What holds women back from launching a successful career as a solo publisher? And why does diversity of voices matter in this dynamic, experimental space?  On March 18, we're sponsoring a free Media Trends Webinar hosted by Journalism.co.uk, which will explore this issue.

Automating sports content gives publishers a much broader scope for audience engagement than simply publishing match texts for top leagues. With automated sports content you can engage readers in different ways before, during and after match day. You can in effect publish content along a separate timeline for every league, every match, every reader – all generated automatically. This is where automation comes into its own – this type of timed targeting at scale would be unviable in a manual newsroom workflow.

A couple of months after it was announced we're one of Sweden's top 50 fastest growing tech companies (list published by Deloitte), we've made another prestigious and brand new list with our automated content services in sports, real estate, traffic and more. Breakit.se, Sweden's leading news site covering new business, has identified the country's 30 most promising,  yet unknown startups – missed, undervalued and ready to take over and United Robots is one of them. Breakit co-founder Olle Aronsson writes: "Some tech companies are constantly seen and heard – and bring in billions in venture capital. Others grow quickly but quietly."

This week, regional title Fædrelandsvennen, part of Polaris Media group, in Kristiansand in southern Norway, has unveiled its brand new Home Sales section, where they publish automated real estate articles about sales in a number of municipalities in Agder county. The publisher's launch included an explanatory article about the new Robot journalist working for them, who retrieves the data, calculates price per square meter, compares it to other homes in the area and writes the text. The articles include Google streetview images of the properties as well as maps and aerial photos with a street address label.

Swedish local media group Gota Media use automated real estate articles as part of their reader revenue strategy. With a conversion rate of 2%, the Real Estate Robot is currently the best converting byline across the group's ten news sites.

We're excited to start our journey as one of the media tech companies making the second cycle of the  EU funded Media Motor Europe programme, fostering media industry startups and scaleups. Our CEO Sören Karlsson comments: "We're looking forward to tapping into the great resource that the participating innovation hubs, coaches and network of startups constitute. I also think it's encouraging that the EU, through its funding of the programme, clearly recognises the key role that tech in general, and AI in particular, is already playing in the future of the free press."

As we near the end of an extraordinarily challenging year, the news industry is taking stock. Doing a retro, in tech development scrum speak. From our Scandinavian newsroom automation horizon, the data and insights we’ve gathered are what we expected them to be – a year or two from now. Where a year ago, robot journalism was seen as something of a futuristic abstraction outside our region, we’re now rolling out content automation projects with publishers across Europe and North America. And in Sweden, where 85% of local news sites now publish robot written articles, newsroom automation has become a matter of real strategic importance for many.

We're hugely proud and happy to be on The Sweden Technology Fast 50 list of fastest growing tech companies in Sweden! We're #37 with a 582% net revenue growth over the past 4 years.