Editor’s note: Joe Procopio, founder of ExitEvent and an executive with Automated Insights, which focuses on computer generated content technology, says you may be reading an AI-generated story and not even know it. This post is the latest in the news partnership between ExitEvent and WRALTechWire.

DURHAM, N.C. – In an article in The Daily Dot, I talked with writer Aaron Sankin about the proliferation of automated content in news stories. The article was inspired by a couple recent events.

Recently, Karstad University’s Dr. Christer Clerwall published the findings of his study of automated content vs. human-written content in the 2014 volume of Journalism Practice. Dr. Clerwall used samples from Automated Insights’ StatSheet product (which Robbie Allen and I built over three years ago) to compare against actual journalist-written articles of the same NFL game.

His conclusion: Not only is automated content virtually indistinguishable from human-generated content, but in most cases it is deemed as more credible and trustworthy.

By the way, I’ve since spoken to Clerwall, and it’s obvious he gets where automated content is going and why it’s so valuable.

As you might imagine, this news got picked up by a lot of outlets, including PandoDaily and the Daily Dot.

Then, the Monday, March 17th Los Angeles earthquake story was “broken” in the LA Times with a computer-generated story published by QuakeBot, which monitors and reports on the data feed from the U.S. Geological Survey.

People were fascinated, and rightly so. This is a perfect example of machines being able to break news at a moment’s notice. However, much like those automated weather service warnings you get on your television and radio, it’s not exactly brand new.

In fact, you’ve probably already read your share of automated content, especially in the areas of sports, finance, weather, real estate, and personal fitness.

The full story can be read online at ExitEvent.