Google blows $800,000 on bots to flood the UK with 30,000 ‘articles’ a month

Templated stories sourced from government databases to push web ads. Welcome to your dystopia

‘Google has today awarded €706,000 ($800,000) to the UK’s Press Association to develop robot reporters that can crank out 30,000 articles a month for local newspapers and bloggers.
The cash injection is part of the advertising goliath’s €150m Digital News Initiative, a three-year program that allegedly supports European journalism through technology (or, rather, helps websites get more readers and thus shift more Google ads). Now in its third and final year, the fund will bankroll 107 projects in 27 countries to the tune of €22m ($25m) in 2017.
The Press Association project – codenamed RADAR, or Reporters and Data and Robots – will be a collaborative effort with Urbs Media, a UK startup that specializes in automated data journalism. The Press Association is Blighty’s equivalent of America’s Associated Press – a roving newswire that feeds stories to publications.’
Read more: Google blows $800,000 on bots to flood the UK with 30,000 ‘articles’ a month