Robot Blogging – The Future for Fresh Content?

Blogging – a practice that over the space of a few short years evolved from a niche novelty into an all-powerful web broadcasting and marketing tool. Thanks to the way in which the web is now universally accessible, pretty much anyone with something to say is able to say what they want to who they want at any time they want and from any angle they choose. Some just like to rant, some are into brand promotion and for others blogging has become the generator of their seven-figure incomes.Business blogs in particular are proving to be some of the most powerful marketing tools in recent history, which has in turn led to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs for those with the required skills and dedication. But here’s the thing – where there’s a will to find a faster and cheaper method for filling a role there’s usually a way to make it happen…blogging may not be exempt from the rule.    This week, a rather interesting and to some extent worrying story broke concerning the way in which the Associated Press intends to use robotic writers for its usual quarterly reports coverage. In this particular instance it all makes pretty good sense – most economic and financial journalists would honestly rather walk on hot coals than spend any real time playing with quarterly financial data. The reason being that once the numbers have been released by any given business, it’s then a case of crunching the living hell out of them in relation to past performance, the performance of rivals, the projections of analysts, general economic and industry performance and so on.Suffice to say, it’s a hell of a task to cover just one business with any real depth.And so it’s looking like this time around there will be a series of robots tasked with the duty – robots that will automatically pick up on the reports the second they’re published, do all the necessary maths and put out well-written reports for final readers.Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of automation this year. A few months ago, a variety of news sources admitted that when it comes to certain events like severe weather conditions and the like, they have robots or computers in place to break the news the very second it becomes news. They’ve managed to find a way of breaking certain stories faster than any human journalist or blogger ever could, which on the surface is impressive enough, but prompts a rather stark question:What’s to become of the human blogger in years to come?With RSS feeds and all manner of real-time 24/7 coverage, it’s inevitable that certain areas of blogging and much news writing in general will fall into the hands of robots and computer automation. However, while ever there are bloggers out there that are willing to chase celebrities down the street, share their weird personal musings and generally make things up for our entertainment, there will still be a very real and important place for human bloggers.