After becoming the first in the world to ‘employ’ not one, but two artificial intelligence (AI) news anchors, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua has announced that a female AI new anchor will be joining the duo of AI news anchors. As before, this world’s first female artificial intelligence news anchor is developed in collaboration with China search engine company Sogou and employs deep learning techniques to pull off facial expressions and lip movements.
Also as before, this eerily life-like appearance and the voice of the digital news anchor are based on a real person and in this case, they are based on Xinhua News Agency’s news anchor Qu Meng (Meng Qu). It may be based on Qu Meng, this digital doppelgänger won’t be called Qu Meng; she is identified by her own name which is Xin Xiaomeng (or Xiaomeng Xin in western world of reading). Xin will make her national TV debut at this year’s “Two Sessions.”
Clearly, from the last we saw digital twin of Zhang Zhao last year and now, the voice aspect has since seen improvement. Xin clearly sounds more natural. There is not hint of robotic voice in her, but the lip movements remain not as synchronized. If you know Chinese language, you can see in the video below that the AI news anchor is very obviously out-of-sync. But hey, like I always like say, “it is a start, isn’t it?” The start of AI take over…
As with her male counterparts, Xin will be able to deliver news tirelessly so long there are editors to feed her the news. However, it appears that there’s only one Chinese AI news anchor and no English AI news anchor. Perhaps, it is coming soon? Anywho, with AI news anchor, Xinhua will be able to boost timeliness in news delivery while slashing production costs.
Image: YouTube.
Source: Oddity Central.
