automated news

9 April 2002

columbia newsblaster is a tool that trawls the net looking for news stories and then publishes computer generated summaries. it creates some decidedly odd sentences and sometimes twists the sense a little but i think it could become quite useful as a quick stop on the net as it treats news stories differently to human editors:

it can quickly chop down stories into bite-size chunks, but it cannot exercise the editorial judgement needed to sort complex material and to achieve balance.