China’s state news agency, Xinhua, reveals world’s first artificial intelligence news anchor

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, reveals world’s first artificial intelligence news anchor

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, revealed yesterday world’s first AI news anchor. Yesterday Xinhua presented the first artificial intelligence news anchor with the help the Chinese search engine, Sogou.

This premier was unveiled on two versions, a chinese version and an english one. Xinhua stated the news anchor will “work” 24/7 and his purpose is to reduce costs. Also, they stated the AI anchor can read texts as well as a human being but many of us tend to doubt that. Although the visuals are good, the voice is clearly robotic even weird.

The gestures and expressions are reproduced using AI features and everything is based on the gestures of real anchors. The AI anchor learns from live broadcasting videos all by himself.

Xinhua News Agency is the official state agency of China and the biggest media agency in China. Xinhua has over 170 offices worldwide.

From my personal point of view this is a good effort from Xinhua and a step forward but they still have a lot of work to do before they can consider replacing people with these AI products. Obviously an AI based robot or software can’t replace the charisma of a news anchor but they can come as close and possible with much less costs.

Here you can find a short presentation of the AI based anchor:

We will watch further Xinhua’s project evolution to see if this sticks and if they can improve the anchor’s gestures and most importantly, its voice.

What is you opinion on this topic, would you watch a 24/7 channel covered by an AI news anchor?

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