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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Details: AP provides tech companies with election updates via a proprietary API that tech companies can plug into with a subscription.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Details: Each tech company will route the results to different products. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.\"<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
More here:<\/p>\n
Exclusive: AP to call elections for Alexa and other Big Tech channels - Axios<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 Continue reading