Xinhua, the news agency run by the state of China has recently introduced their latest news anchor, who goes by the name Xin Xiaomeng.
What’s so interesting about that? Well, believe it or not, Xin isn’t actually a human being. Although she looks incredibly realistic, she’s actually generated by a highly advanced AI technology, and is the first female news anchor of her kind. Three months ago the same agency released two male AI news anchors.
Xin, a product of both the news agency and Sogou, a Chinese search engine, will be be making her grand debut in March as a Chinese news anchor. Her appearance is actually based on a real life Chinese broadcaster, Qu Meng. At the moment, she only speaks Chinese, and it’s still not clear if she will be able to learn English news reports too.
Although AI news anchor don’t match up to real people (not yet, at least), they still do look very realistic, and in some senses, they are actually even better than human being. For one, they never stutter and will never miss a cue. Perhaps they are not a threat to real life news anchors at the moment, but based on what we’ve seen so far, competition in the field might start getting tough.