Phrazor Solution

Robotizing data-based journalism to increase output quantity and publish efficient content at scale in near real-time speed

The company began exploring AI alternatives for content production to benefit from economies of scale. Phrazor was one among the options they considered and it emerged as the solution for their writing automation needs. Phrazor reports have been configured and implemented in phases across several use cases namely Bullion Prices, Stock Updates, Sports and Elections Coverage. 

1. Bullion Prices

This was the first use case wherein Phrazor produced auto-written, analytical articles covering various data points in graphs and the narrative for the bullion markets. These articles cover various updates on a daily basis related to the Indian Spot Gold/Silver rate, MCX values and Global values. These articles are now being generated in both English and Hindi and cover city-wise rates for 37 cities in India.

2. Stock Updates 

In Phrazor all it took was configuring a single report and that was scaled to 30 stocks. Phrazor auto-writes daily stock updates for each company in the Sensex 30. These updates include the stock price, company financials and the stock’s performance when compared with peers.

These articles are auto-updated with the latest data 6 times a day. In all, a total of 180 articles are written by Phrazor supported by interactive charts. This output would otherwise take close to 20-30 journalists/analysts to devote time and human effort everyday. The accuracy of updates across articles is streamlined with Phrazor web scraping the data directly from online sources and APIs provided by the client. 

Phrazor has also enabled social sharing of the articles. The output of the article is in XML format which is compatible with the firm’s CMS system. With this solution the publishing house is saving not only on the content resources but is also cutting back the work of the design and development team who would otherwise receive the article in a text format which would need conversion for the web.

3. Sports Coverage

The IPL 2020 season began during the lockdown with zero in-stadium viewers, compelling the format to take the digital route. Viewers were glued to television channels, OTT platforms, and News sites for live coverage, commentary and updates. Automating IPL commentary for live matches was the second use case. The goal was to capture play-by-play data in the updates published on the live feed.

Phrazor auto-generated 1 article every 5 overs indicating the no of runs scored and number of wickets taken. This amounted to 8 articles per match and with 60 matches, Phrazor wrote 480 articles real-time and each one was published prior to the start of the next over. In Sports timing matters on and off the field.

4. Elections Coverage

During the Bihar state elections the client extended the Phrazor solution to a use case which required writing updates for each of the 247 constituencies. The report was configured once on Phrazor and captured data related to previous elections, contesting candidates and parties, and demographics related to diversity namely, gender/age of participants and voters. Using Phrazor the client created a repository of 247 articles with an average word count of 200-250 words per article.

Impact

• The automated/robotized processes established by Phrazor help the publishing team to provide instant and accurate information to readers. This has reduced the client’s dependency and costs involved with a vast number of journalists otherwise required to create large volumes of content.
• Phrazor’s Natural Language Generation technology is a time and cost-saving solution providing content freshness, content length and updated content to boost SEO ranking.
• The use of keywords in news articles optimizes online reach by connecting searchers to the site.
• Phrazor provides the opportunity to scale publishing and reporting in each of the use cases and also helps widen the scope of use cases.
• Phrazor’s multilingual capabilities also help expand the audience base of the website.
• Data-based automated analysis and writing within Phrazor allows for personalized reporting at scale.
• The client is encouraged to use data journalism in more aspects of online publishing with Phrazor’s ability to formulate insights from available data into publishable structured stories
• The client has a competitive edge with Phrazor to produce hyper-localised content such as city-wise bullion prices, constituency-wise election coverage. This helps online platforms stay more relevant and updated.