Revolutionizing News: Meet China’s AI Female News Anchor from State Media
China’s Innovative Leap: AI News Anchors Replacing Human Journalists
China is making impressive progress in the realm of journalism, particularly in rendering traditional human journalists less necessary. On February 19, state-run news agency Xinhua announced, in partnership with the search engine Sogou, the unveiling of the world’s first female AI news anchor, Xin Xiaomeng. This virtual anchor is set to make her debut during the upcoming Two Sessions political meetings at the beginning of March.
This announcement follows the introduction of Qiu Hao, the world’s first male AI news anchor, which took place at China’s annual World Internet Conference in November 2022, held in Wuzhen.
In addition, Xinhua and Sogou revealed the development of an enhanced male anchor named Xin Xiaohao, who has the ability to stand, gesticulate, and display more natural mouth movements.
Xinhua has been actively experimenting with AI in journalism over the past few years. Notably, they introduced a robot reporter who faced challenges in mimicking human interaction. In 2017, a robot named Jia Jia, designed to look like a young woman in historical attire, conducted an interview with AI researcher and Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly at an event in Hefei. The discussion was broadcast live by Xinhua, which labeled Jia Jia as a special reporter. However, Jia Jia had difficulty responding naturally to many of Kelly’s inquiries, often taking up to ten seconds to answer and frequently offering brief responses that occasionally lacked coherence.
Earlier in that same year, a smaller robot referred to as Inspire, standing at just 1.2 meters tall, served as an intern reporter for Xinhua during the Two Sessions meetings.
Xinhua noted that these robotic “new employees” have shown enthusiasm for their roles, having published approximately 3,400 reports and accumulating over 10,000 minutes of content since their launch in November.
