The story of the independent project BULLETIN.OBSERVER — from an idea to a fully-fledged news website.
He has no large editorial team, no staff of journalists and no investors behind him. His main job is as a bus driver. But in his spare time, he took on a task that usually requires a team of developers, editors and news processing specialists: he created his own news website using artificial intelligence.
This is how BULLETIN.OBSERVER came into being – a project that gathers information, processes news stories using AI and publishes them in several languages.
But the main question isn’t whether it’s possible to set up such a website. It is. What’s far more interesting is this: can it be useful to readers and develop into a real business?
Not just a website, but an attempt to build a system
A modern news website is not just a headline and some text. You need to identify events, gather information from sources, verify the content, prepare the material, format the publication and ensure that different versions of the article do not contradict one another.
At BULLETIN.OBSERVER, a significant part of this work is automated. Artificial intelligence is used to process information and prepare publications in English and Russian.
Behind a seemingly simple news page lies a chain of technical processes. And the more operations are carried out automatically, the more important it is to organise the entire system correctly: an error at one stage could find its way into the final publication.
What we’ve achieved so far
The first result is quite tangible: the idea is no longer just an idea. The website is up and running, articles are being published, and the automated system is processing news content.
For someone working on the project alongside their main job, this is a milestone already achieved. But a functioning website and a successful news business are not one and the same.
- Technical aspects: we have succeeded in creating a functioning website with automated news processing.
- Multilingualism: content is produced in English and Russian.
- Next stage: to prove that readers actually want these articles and that they are of a sufficiently high standard.
Why use artificial intelligence here?
The main idea behind automation is to reduce the amount of repetitive work and make the publication of content less reliant on manual processing of each news item.
However, AI does not turn any text into reliable journalism. It may misrepresent the meaning, mix up details, present unconfirmed information with excessive certainty, or generate several similar articles about a single event.
Therefore, it is not the mere fact of using a neural network that matters, but how reliably the verification of the results is organised. In news reporting, a convincingly written error is still an error.
The most interesting challenge is not publication, but trust
A news project faces a serious problem: there are already many websites on the internet that publish content about the same events. The use of AI alone does not give the reader a reason to choose this particular new resource.
For BULLETIN.OBSERVER to carve out its own space in this environment, several questions need to be answered:
- Is the published content accurate enough?
- Is it possible to distinguish verified facts from controversial or incomplete information?
- Does the website repeat the same news story under different headlines?
- Do the articles offer added value compared to other news websites?
- Do readers return for new content?
The last question is particularly important. A visitor who happens to open a single page from a search result does not necessarily mean that the website has built up a loyal audience.
Is it possible to make money from this?
In theory, yes. But simply having a website and automated processes does not yet prove that the project will be profitable.
To achieve this, you need readers, a steady stream of traffic and a clear revenue model. Moreover, costs are not limited to server fees: funds may be required for content production, system maintenance, quality control and website development.
If revenue from advertising or other sources turns out to be lower than the total costs, even a technically successful project will remain loss-making. Therefore, commercial potential must be assessed using figures, not just the number of articles published.
What will determine the outcome going forward?
The most important task at present is not simply to increase the number of publications, but to assess the quality and usefulness of the system already in operation.
To do this, it is worth assessing the accuracy of the content, identifying repetitive news items, checking that headlines and content are consistent, and then observing how real visitors interact with the website.
Creating a news website using AI is a technical challenge. Making it reliable, relevant to people and economically viable is a far more complex task.
A story with no predetermined ending
The story of BULLETIN.OBSERVER is not one of instant success thanks to artificial intelligence. It is the story of how a person with an ordinary job decided to create a digital product on their own and turned the idea into a working project.
There are still questions ahead that cannot be answered by a single impressive presentation: how high the quality of the articles will be in the long run, whether a loyal readership will emerge, and whether the website will be able to cover its costs.
The answer will come not from the promises of technology, but from real results: the reliability of the news, reader interest and the project’s financial viability.
BULLETIN.OBSERVER already exists. Now it remains to be seen whether anyone other than its creator actually needs it.