Looking at the speed at which machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is developing, it’s not very hard to imagine that AI anchors could be the future of news.
China’s Xinhua News Agency Xinhua recently unveiled an AI news anchor at China’s World Internet Conference.
The world’s first AI News has voice and facial expressions of a real person. It’s modeled on a real presenter named Zhang Zhow. AI-powered anchor learns from live broadcast videos to man the news desk 24-hours a day.
Cost cutting
Xinhua created the anchor in collaboration with Chinese search engine company Sogou.com to improve efficiency and cut News production costs.
Although removing the human element out of news reading might have reduced the cost but listening to a robot on world trade and politics can’t be engaging.
Robotic voice
Designed to sound like a professional human anchor, this English-speaking news anchor reads news in a synthesized voice but the voice sounds very robotic and awkward.