Exclusive: AP to call elections for Alexa and other Big Tech channels – Axios

Many of the world's biggest tech and telecom companies, like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and AT&T, are licensing the Associated Press' election results to power their voice, video and search products, executives tell Axios.

How it works: Because tech firms need to answer millions of unique voice commands and search queries in real time, the results will be coded through an API an interface that a computer program can read designed to handle "not enough results in yet" and "too close to call" cases.

Why it matters: Many election outcomes are expected to be delayed for at least a week. Given the enormous growth of smart home devices and voice assistants during the pandemic, users are going to expect accurate, real-time updates via those platforms.

The big picture: The uncertain nature of this year's election and the pandemic-driven shift to mail-in voting has put more pressure on companies like AP as well as their decision-desk counterparts at TV networks to proceed with caution when calling races. Some media companies have opted not to predict election results at all.

Details: AP provides tech companies with election updates via a proprietary API that tech companies can plug into with a subscription.

To address new use cases, AP had to not only convert all of its election data into easily-accessible code, but also to consider different types of math and data sets when determining results.

Details: Each tech company will route the results to different products.

Between the lines: For years, AP provided election results mostly to media companies for them to publish to their audiences. But today, any company that delivers information is expected to provide answers.

The bottom line: "This stuff was typically prepared by elections researchers for other elections researchers," says Scanlon. "It was never thought of this way when it was built. We have to think about a different end user now."

More here:

Exclusive: AP to call elections for Alexa and other Big Tech channels - Axios