The automated journalists are here: StatsMonkey, the Northwestern University-built program that automatically generates sports stories based on stats, is publishing stories on Big Ten Network.

The software was licensed by a company called Narrative Science, so a Google search of Big Ten for those keywords brings up all the stories that have been written by robots—quite a few so far.

The results are, as David Carr famously wrote last year, “not-that-terrible.”

The question is whether robots can tackle the grunt work, freeing up people to do more interesting reporting, or whether the robot, or monkey, will ultimately end up costing a sports reporter her job.

photo: kabils