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Comment by kris_wayton | Hacker News Reader

Also, typically, the "journalist" doesn't pick the headline...an editor does. Not sure if their AI section follows that tradition.

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I assume most major media outlet editors have used AI to help them come up with headlines for many years.

Coming up with interesting headlines that entice readers without misrepresenting content is actually pretty difficult--especially at publications that value clever headlines.

It's just A/B testing, not "AI". It's done the same way as digital ads. You come up with 3 different titles for the same link, and serve them to 3 random audiences, and figure out which one got more engagement.

Google and Facebook of course do offer "ML-based conversion optimization", but it's widely regarded as hoopla by ad buyers.

If those frameworks for A/B testing do any statistical analysis or automation I think they are easily classifiable as AI. I wouldn't be surprised if some publications at the top are using much more sophisticated software than that. I could only speculate to what level or with what success ML has been integrated into those pipelines.

Yes, A/B tests are evaluated using T-Test or the Mann-Whitney U statistic. They have existed for a long time and never been classified as "AI". Although with that buzzword currently creating a gold rush, I have no doubt that every half-assed platform will be using that terminology going forward.

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