AI-assisted reporting: first drafts from statistics and documents, finished by experts
AI-assisted reporting turns indicator data and documents into draft reports, with charts, narratives and cited sources, which analysts then review, edit and finalise. Our first application, the SCOPE Report Generator, drafts the evidence base of FAO's agrifood systems country diagnostics.
- Built for SCOPE, FAO's initiative supporting UN country programming
- Combines indicator data from FAO's Agrifood Systems Data Platform with analysis of country documents
- Experts stay in charge: every draft is reviewed and edited before use, following our Responsible AI principles
The SCOPE Report Generator is an internal FAO tool. FAO units and partners interested in applying the approach to their own reports can contact the Data Lab.
The challenge
Statistical reports often bring together dozens of indicators and many documents. Assembling that evidence, charting it and describing it takes time that analysts would rather spend on interpretation and dialogue with the people who use the report.
How it works
- Analyst: chooses what the report covers: the country, the period, the themes and, if they wish, the individual indicators.
- Tool: retrieves the indicators from a statistical data platform, with regional and global comparisons.
- Tool: draws a chart for each indicator and describes what the data show.
- Tool: searches a curated library of documents to answer the report's analytical questions, citing its sources.
- Tool: merges both into one narrative per theme.
- Analyst: reviews the draft, rewrites any section, adjusts any chart and drops indicators, then exports it to Word.
First application: SCOPE country diagnostics
The Analytical Support Mechanism for Agrifood System Country Programming and Evidence (SCOPE) is an FAO corporate initiative led by the Chief Economist. Its analytical teams cover five regions and the Small Island Developing States. Their first output for a country is a diagnostic of the state of its national agrifood system, which the SCOPE Report Generator helps prepare.
The diagnostic covers six outcomes, from enhanced production to better means of implementation. Its indicators come from FAO's Agrifood Systems Data Platform.
Human in the loop
The tool does the heavy lifting; analysts make the decisions. Its output is a draft that analysts use as input to the final report, which is theirs. Built-in safeguards support their review: indicator descriptions stay strictly with what the data show, sources are cited, numbers are checked automatically, and every draft is labelled as AI-generated. See Responsible AI.