China's state-run press agency Xinhua on Tuesday unveiled its first female AI anchor, Xin Xiaomeng, who will join its growing team of virtual presenters
The female AI newsreader will make her professional debut during the upcoming meetings of the country's national legislature and top political advisory body in March, according to Xinhua at a press conference on Tuesday.
Modelled after the agency's flesh-and-blood journalist Qu Meng, the AI newsreader was jointly developed by Xinhua and search engine company Sogou.com and can 'read texts as naturally as a professional anchor'.
'Hello everyone, I am the world's first female AI presenter developed by Xinhua News Agency and Sougu. My name is Xin Xiaomeng,' says the journalist in an introductory video.
She joins the digital doppelgangers of English-language anchor Zhang Zhao and his Chinese-language counterpart Qiu Hao, who were unveiled in November during the 2018 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.
Xinhua also on Tuesday unveiled an improved version of its AI presenter Qiu Hao, named Xin Xiaohao, who is able to gesticulate in a natural manner and read the news while standing up.
An AI system has been used to synthesise the presenters' voices, lip movements and expressions based on those of real presenters.
The digital anchors offer certain advantages over humans, Xinhua previously said. They are available to work 24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms.
This can reduce news production costs and improve efficiency during breaking news reports.
Xinhua said that its 'new employees' have taken to their roles with enthusiasm and have published more than 3,400 reports totaling over 10,000 minutes in length since November.
Net users previously welcomed the new presenters while others questioned whether they would replace their human counterparts. Some complained that the AI newsreaders had a very robotic and unnatural voice.
China has become one of the leading global hubs for AI development in recent years.
Several fields such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing have adopted machine learning systems for commercial uses.
Automating workplaces in China with AI could add 0.8 to 1.4 per cent to gross domestic product (GDP) growth annually, depending on the speed of adoption, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute.
Reader Comments
I enjoy reading you binra, you know that
I like binra, too.
And I like gdpetti.
Really I like anybody here at Sott that exhibits some genuine personality and some commenting longevity and tenacity and irritability, and who can fight the state robots and the heavily armed and assembled and entirely phoney glory seekers, even just a little bit.
Have a reasonably good day everybody, if you are like this and belong to and with the rest of us, in this manner.
Newcomers are also welcome, Stay with us, if you can.
Sott is hardly perfect, but it more resembles the actual human spirit, than most.
ned,
out
Its 'easy' to persist in what we already 'think' - but is that thinking? Or is this being thunk? (robot or identity driven). Reactive thought is database thinking. Object continuity within an objective construct of past associations. Thought is creative - but can be used uncreatively as a filtering, limiting distorting construct through which to entrance and explore a world in which “Everything is BACKWARDS".
Taking thought is more like casting a net to an attuned frequency domain. The giving and receiving is a resonance of communion through which communication translates into 'physical' terms, of symbol, image and concept - while remaining in the open or active willingness of a communion. That is to say the feeling or discerning of the thought as it finds form, direction, structure. Listening within is not thinking, but listening. Thoughts arise resonant to the movement of desire and the quality of our desire is our willingness to be and know it.
Thinking runs a cover story. No blame.
But the heart was not hidden to NEVER rise again in creative freedom!
But waits on the establishing of a true safety of aligned willingness for welcome rather than rejection. Guilt, hate and fear are not safe basis from which to create, and so in a sense they shut off awareness of creation in the straitjacket of conflicted paralysis. That may seem dynamic in its throes but simply loops an archetypal drama in 'new clothes'.
The intent to replicate life is the desire in which we become replicants.
But the mind that holds such intent is the freedom to recognize and release it for the true desire of which and for which it is created. The wished for, can soon become a wish there was power to escape or overcome unexpected consequence. And so the 'wish-for' persists in place of truly willing - which is the gentleness of power prompting recognition, and no coercion at all.
Communion is a 'shared' purpose or mind.
Excommunication (partitioned segregation) is a trick of mind by which to seem to get rid of the unwanted by splitting off.
This isn't the truth of power and so must corrupt a true appreciation for the power of living now.
Stillness - or an unconflicted mind - is where presence waits our notice. Old habits are new opportunities for choice, but first the robot has to be acknowledged. No one can release what they are unwilling to own. No one can persist in what has been revealed false or meaningless. And any attempt to do so is a different contextual meaning than the subconscious routine.
We can self-limit to robotic conformity as a protection of unconsciousness against re-waking true desire. And my sense is that this is where our true fear lies, and not in the layers of fear-symbols set up to keep it hidden.