20 companies already employ robot writers

A company that produces software to automatically write articles has more than 20 customers including newspaper publishers.

The New York Times revealed that Chicago-based Narrative Science provides technology that allows for automatic generation of news reports and that the creators of the technology believe that such systems could win a ‘Pulitzer Prize’ in journalism within five years.

Narrative Science represents a commercialisation of more than a decade of research with company founders Chris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum also co-directors of the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University.

The Narrative Science team told the New York Times that far from replacing journalists, the software was aimed producing low cost content to "expand and enrich coverage when editorial budgets are under pressure".

This American Football game report between Wisconsin and UNLV was created by the Narrative Science system.