Forbes’ experiment to integrate AI into a news team to enhance story generation

Forbes’ new AI-driven CMS, Bertie, was rolled out last summer to help North American editorial staff research and recommend article ideas, related links and images.

What makes it special is that it can learn from and customize its output for different writers. It can recommend article topics to contributors based on their earlier pieces, and also suggest headlines and images that are in sync with the sentiment of their story.

Salah Zalatimo, Forbes Media’s Chief Digital Officer, says that Bertie serves more like a “thought-starter,” because it does not currently produce content which a contributor would want to publish as is.

Forbes says that the site doubled its number of monthly loyal visitors since rolling out Bertie in July. Traffic also increased during this period, reaching a 12-month high of 65 million monthly uniques in November 2018.

Forbes doubles monthly visitors with Bertie, an AI-driven CMS