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Covering the Olympics is a monumental task for any media outlet, so the Washington Post has called in some help from the world of robotics and artificial intelligence.
The Post has created its very own software in-house that will publish real-time reports on the medal winners from the Games, with results going straight up on their website and out via their Twitter account.
Long Qingquan #CHN wins weightlifting gold in men's 56kg, beating Om Yun Chol #PRK.
— Post Olympics (@wpolympicsbot) August 7, 2016
Daniele Garozzo #ITA wins fencing gold in men's individual foil, beating Alexander Massialas #USA.
— Post Olympics (@wpolympicsbot) August 7, 2016
Timur Safin #RUS wins fencing bronze in men's individual foil, beating Richard Kruse #GBR.
— Post Olympics (@wpolympicsbot) August 7, 2016
The bot has been programmed to post automatically without any human intervention having gathered data on the latest results as well as medal tables and various scores from within different competitions.
Jeremy Gilbert, the head of digital projects at The Post has been quick to slap down any suggestions that this is the beginning of robots taking jobs from humans too, saying “we’re not trying to replace reporters, we’re trying to free them up.”
The software is called Heliograf, and has a team of three engineers keeping an eye on how it runs. If all goes well, there are plans to use it to report results from the US election in November in real time, with Gilbert adding that the data the bot picks up on could be used to contribute to wider stories human reporters are working on.
