Xinhua, a Chinese state-owned press agency has welcomed two newsreaders powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) which are jointly developed by Xinhua and search engine company Sogou.com.
According to Xinhua, the AI newsreaders can ‘learn from live broadcast videos and read texts as naturally as professional news anchors. The AI system has been used to synthesize the presenters’ voices, lip movements and expressions based on those of real Xinhua presenters, English language anchor Zhang Zhao and his Chinese-language counterpart Qiu Hao.
The agency further stated that the digital anchors offer certain advantages as they are available to work 24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms and hence reduce news production costs and improve efficiency during breaking news reports.However, there are several debates online such as Chinese micro-blogging site ‘Weibo’ questioned whether it would replace human reporters while other online users questioned about the use of it and that it may simply fire normal presenters when some state that the AI’s voice is too stiff.
China has become one of the leading global hubs for AI development in recent years in several fields such as finance, healthcare and manufacturing have adopted machine learning systems for commercial uses which could add 0.8% to 1.4% to the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually.
Just like every country, the Maldives also has many news medias employing several news reporters or anchors who unfortunately cannot work 24 hours a day like the AI anchors without getting tired. Moreover, AI anchors are programmed to learn and read text and so are not required to be trained like humans while they can also be programmed to learn and speak in every language which can therefore be used in any country. Lastly, there will be an initial cost of acquiring the AI anchors but as no salary is required for robots, it will reduce news production costs in the long run while improving efficiency. Therefore, AI anchors can also change the future of the broadcasting in the Maldives.
