The Financial Times reported last week that a U.S. news service has designed computer programs to write stories for them.

“Thomson Financial, the business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since March and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice,” according to the article. “The computers work so fast that an earnings story can be released within 0.3 seconds of the company making results public.”

The computers pen stories about “whether a company has done better or worse than expected …. by using previous results in Thomson’s database.” They’ve been 100% accurate so far, but the stories are a wee bit on the dry side, so a project to integrate more adjectives into their programs is in the works.

Thomson’s senior vice-president of strategy says that using the computers will free up their reporters to “have more time to think.”

Yeah — more time to think about how a robot could steal their beat.

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Read the Financial Times story here