When a magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit Mianyang City in Southwest China's Sichuan Province on May 29, a robot at the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) generated a 560-Chinese-character news report within six seconds, Chengdu Business News has reported.

The story includes a headline, basic data about the quake and two pictures of the location and topography. It also provides background data such as quakes in the past five years and information about villages and towns within 300 kilometers of the epicenter.

The article was created and published automatically, according to CENC under the China Earthquake Administration. Two minutes after the quake shook the ground, CENC was able to share the information on China's Twitter-like Weibo social network.

Development of the robotic writing system started in the second half of 2015 and will be put into official use after more experiments. Depending on the scale and damage of the earthquake, the robot can generate short or long stories by selecting relevant information.

On March 17, 2014, the Los Angeles Times was the first media outlet to report on a temblor with an automated system pre-programmed for the task. The Associated Press and China's Xinhua News Agency also employ robotic systems in reporting.

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