Why the Washington Post is building chatbots to deliver the news
The Washington Post is developing a news bot to act as a virtual reporter.
Chatbots have intrigued digital and old-school publishers, who recognize a growing audience on messaging apps. But with temptation comes a whole new set of complexities. For one: How do you build a useful bot that won’t go rogue and damage a publisher’s credibility?
The Washington Post is one of many big-name publishers developing such a news bot, and so far it’s just known internally as the WaPo bot, according to Joey Marburger, director of product at the newspaper. His team, which includes two engineers, is building the bot as more messaging apps open to such third-party experiences. Kik is launching a bot store today, and Facebook is getting ready to launch a bot store on Messenger, at its F8 conference next week, according to sources.
“We’re not going to have an algorithmic conversation learning bot that starts to create its own identity from nowhere, so we avoid that Microsoft Tay debacle,” Marburger said. “But we do want it to have a personality and tone, so we will give it that. That should really be the tone and personality of the Washington Post, to a certain extent. So it’s got to be able to handle some basic conversation but not in the way of tricking it into denying the Holocaust.” ...
All publishers are now having to decide on the services they could provide through the bots, how they might fit the brand, and then how to monetize their content. The Post wants a chatbot that can talk with readers and research news, answering their need for information. In some ways, it will act like a reporter, Marburger said.
“It could have explicit commands like, ‘Do this,’ but it can also be open-ended commands like, ‘What’s the latest on Donald Trump?’ And it should be able to provide that information to you,” Marburger said. “It won’t maintain your calendar or help you with tracking packages or things like that. It’s got to do what people would expect the Washington Post to do for them.”
