Sensor Tower has begun producing back-dated reports credited to the work of 'Timothy, your friendly neighborhood AI'.
The latest example is entitled 'Hypercasual games performance on Android platform: Q1 2023 review' with a publication date of April 2023. It's also possible to also find reports similarly dating back to April that are also the work of Timothy, despite internet archives suggesting that the articles were published recently.
AI-produced reports can be found here, here and here. Despite the April publishing date, XML sitemap data shows that the (appropriately enough) AI Chat Applications On iOS report, for example, was published October 17.
Meanwhile Timothy himself - as pictured on this story and his articles - is the product of DALL–E and was created on September 6 2023 using the prompt "Image of friendly AI robot looking similar to Timothy from StarCraft" according to image metadata.
But is he AI-ny good?
Timothy's most recent 'deep dive', 'Hypercasual games performance on Android platform: Q1 2023 review' is a simple top 10, listing the top 10 games by revenue on Android, before offering a relatively simple commentary on each game’s performance.
Timothy's other work follows a similar pattern: taking simple data and writing a sentence for each entry.
In the most recent report, Timothy writes: "Bus Simulator : Ultimate, a realistic bus simulation game, saw a slight decrease in revenue compared to the previous period. Despite this, the game still managed to generate substantial revenue, indicating its strong presence in the market. The game also saw a significant increase in downloads, suggesting that it continues to attract new users."
While Ice Brick Breaker "a simple yet addictive idle game, experienced a significant increase in both revenue and downloads. This could be attributed to its easy-to-play nature and the fact that it can be played passively, making it a popular choice among users."
PocketGamer.biz reached out for comment on Sensor Tower's use of AI for content creation and whether this will continue to be part of its marketing and insights methods moving forward.
"As our customers are asking for more context and consultation along with our data, Sensor Tower's (human) insights team is spending more time on custom reports and more sector based analysis. We are in the early days of seeing if AI generated short-form posts can be a public facing and factual complement to these deeper insights driven reports," said Seema Shah, senior director of research and head of investor research at Sensor Tower.
Jobs for the Bots?
While it may be entirely coincidental, these AI-written releases are happening during a similar time frame that saw Sensor Tower lay off 40 members of staff (in September), including several prominent executives such as the CMO and CFO and former CEO Alex Malafeev moving to focus on Sensor Tower's AI advancements in an advisory role. Reports at the time suggested that almost all of the marketing department were also removed.
“Sensor Tower’s management team took necessary steps to reorganise and right-size our business under a talented and experienced senior leadership team,” the company said at the time.
Is today’s reveal of Timothy's AI-derived reports the latest example of AI impacting employment? Can AI ever hope to provide the same depth and insight as a human analyst? Let us know your thoughts via X below.
Analytics specialist Sensor Tower are producing AI-driven insights reports. What do you reckon? Can AI beat human analysts to the punch? Let us know below. https://t.co/SFk9BDnPmm
— PocketGamer.biz (@pgbiz) November 22, 2023
