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

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.

Swedish sports data and media veteran EverySport Media Group have signed an agreement with us for automated content from the Sports Robot as well as the Transaction bot. The agreement covers match reports in ice hockey, football and floor ball as well as texts on player transactions in ice hockey. ESMG is a strategic partner to United Robots for sports data, and the two text types covered by the new agreement will be based on ESMG data from the Everysport database and Elite Prospects, the world’s largest ice hockey database, respectively. 

Swedish local media group Gota Media is the latest of a growing fleet of Scandinavian publishing houses who see the value of automating as much of their routine reporting as possible. Since we launched in 2015, with Mittmedia (now in Bonnier News Local) as our first partner publisher, newsroom automation has become standard practice in Sweden, freeing up editorial resources and driving business effects, including reader revenues.