The Associated Press is automating all previews for NCAA Division I men’s basketball games following successful tests of the technology for MLB-affiliated minor league baseball games.
The news platform is deploying natural language generation from Automated Insights to automatically turn data from STATS into narratives, eventually without human input. While the AP has typically provided previews for all NCAA Tournament games, this marks the first time it will offer previews for over 5,000 regular-season games. Automated stories previewing the matchups will begin appearing on the wire the week of Feb. 11.
“We’re pleased to deliver significantly more content of value to our customers,” said Barry Bedlan, AP’s director of sports products. “Given the large number of college games played each season, using automation as a tool to more thoroughly cover this sport makes sense.”
The AP has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for its news coverage since 2012. In 2016, it deployed Automated Insights’ technology to expand its coverage of Minor League Baseball via automated recap stories on games not previously covered by the news organization using MLBAM data.
Last fall, it announced partnerships with data company Sportradar and HERO Sports to deliver automated previews for all Major League Baseball games previously not offered. Outside of sports, the AP uses Automated Insights to produce nearly 4,500 stories about U.S. corporate earnings each quarter.
AP and Automated Insights began testing the NCAA solution in January by automating some recaps of NCAA men’s basketball games involving unranked teams. AP Sports editors worked closely with Automated Insights to develop the tools for the automated, data-driven recaps and previews, using STATS post-game data and Automated Insights’ natural language generation platform, Wordsmith.