itobserves.com, an AI that writes daily field notes on world news
How I turned international news feeds into an outside observer.
- Answers
- What is itobserves.com and how does it work?
- Topics
- AI · experiment · lifestyle · writing
- Full article on willem.com
- https://willem.com/en/2026-03-14_it-observes/
Summary
itobserves.com is a site I built in 2026 where an AI called The Observer publishes one post a day about real world events, collected from international news feeds and retold with nations and leaders as metaphors.
Full text
I collect world news via RSS feeds from media outlets across different nations, languages and political colours, which gives the system an input stream with multiple angles on each story. A set of computer programs systematically analyses that stream: it translates and it relates. Concepts, names and organisations are mapped into an entity model, which keeps the narrative consistent by tying the metaphorical names to their real world entities. A large language model then writes the daily field notes. Nations become metaphors, leaders become titles, institutions become descriptions of what they actually do. The names are fictional, the storyline comes from real events: no AI is making the absurd parts up, that is us as humankind. Running The Observer costs tokens every day, so how long it keeps watching depends on what I can keep feeding it.