The news programs of television networks worldwide put a lot of emphasis on the staging, relying on technology to reach viewers in a more dynamic and simple way. And, apparently, very soon they will take a big leap with virtual presenters generated by Artificial Intelligence, because in recent months several projects have been presented, although this setting comes from long ago.
In 2018, seeking to reduce production costs and improve efficiency, the Chinese News Agency, Xinhua, and the search engine Sogou presented at the fifth World Internet Conference their first digital news presenters, built through a hologram and an artificial intelligence program.
For this quite real virtual experience, the images were taken from two popular TV anchors in this country.
And although both programs could read text like a professional news anchor, they had limitations in facial expressions.
And that was not all, because the following year, with a more mature technology, they presented their female version, Xin Xiaomeng, created to present newscasts 24 hours a day without a break.
So after five years of research and testing, this technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, and in 2023 the first results could be seen.
In March, China’s People’s Daily News Agency introduced Ren Xiaorong, with the ability to provide 24/7 news coverage and who learned her skills from thousands of news anchors, which will evolve with feedback from viewers. And while impressive at first glance, at the moment, this digital anchor is not as advanced as the Chatbot, and its responses are generic, in line with Chinese Communist Party ideology.
Kuwait News presented Fedha, which imitates human movements and shows all kinds of emotions that, in addition to being able to conduct the news, offering new and innovative content, would solve viewers’ questions in real time.
Mexico’s Grupo Fórmula presented NAT, the first news anchor in Latin America, generated through artificial intelligence that shares space with other real commentators to provide relevant information. Although its performance is far from realistic, the idea is that it will continuously learn and adapt as it acquires new data and knowledge, so that it will accentuate its presence in several productions of the Azteca company, which has guaranteed that it will not deliver any inaccurate information about any news. NAT already has a new partner, and his name is MAX.
Several of these presenters are in the testing phase, but already many professionals fear that they will be replaced, because these virtual beings, like robots, work 24 hours a day on multiple platforms and do not receive salaries or get sick. And they are not only present in communications, because one artificial intelligence became the advisor to the government of Romania and another became the CEO of the gaming company, NetDragon WebSoft, the AI Tang Yu. But those are topics for another note.
There is no doubt, we are in the midst of the AI revolution.