Municipal 2020: robots write articles for the French media

Audio 40:19

A robot content writer doesn't really look like that. But this subject is difficult to illustrate, you know. REUTERS / Kacper Pempel

By: Steven Jambot Follow | Simon Decreuze Follow

On Sunday March 15 and 22, the French are called to the polls for municipal elections. The Media Workshop welcomes the CEO of a French company whose content-writing robots will write articles with the results of the votes in each municipality.

Publicity

Claude de Loupy is the co-founder of Syllabs , the leading provider of automatically written content for the French media. Its “writing engines” robots will write tens of thousands of articles on the evening of March 15 and 22, presenting the results on the websites of France Bleu, Ouest-France, Sud-Ouest, Press Center, La Nouvelle République and even News .Fr.

If the specter of robot journalists has faded - a “dystopia” - the creation and automatic publication of tens of thousands of articles obviously raises many questions to which the CEO of Syllabs responds straightforwardly. He assures that this low added value content allows journalists to focus on analysis and reporting.

At the start of the program, we broadcast an interview with journalist Cécile Durring , from RTS , radio and French-speaking Swiss public television. With a colleague from the show Mise au point , she immersed herself for two months in the small town of Moudon, in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. The aim was to mobilize residents for the federal elections and encourage them to vote. The result: turnout went from 36 to 46% and journalists learned a lot.

At the end of the program, Mondoblog audio is devoted to World Climate Day , which takes place on March 15. Cameroonian Mondoblogger Salma Amadore , journalist by profession, closely follows young people who are committed to the environment. She went to meet about fifty of them who made the choice to take advantage of their vacation to save the planet.

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  • 2020 municipal elections
  • Media
  • Technologies
  • New technologies
  • Journalism
  • France
  • Swiss

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