In a first-of-its-kind innovation worldwide, the Chinese news agency Xinhua, in partnership with tech firm Sogou Inc., has launched an AI-powered robot anchor. According to Xinhua, the "AI Synthetic Anchor" can read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor.
The robot "anchor" is an innovative technological breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence. It is also the first complete experiment to integrate audio and video recordings in real-time with a virtual character through artificial intelligence.
The debut of the new technology came at the fifth edition of World Internet Conference in the eastern Chinese town of Wuzhen in the Zhejiang Province, east China.
The anchor can produce sounds, sentences, and lips movement, like a real news anchor. The designers have set up a model integrating these features, in which they used a pivotal technique to produce video that is identical to the news content.
The "AI Synthetic Anchor" will work for the Xinhua agency and will present the news in Chinese and English. Editors are set to provide the news content constantly as the robot anchor is designed to work all day, every day.
The "robot anchor" boosts the efficiency of TV news, reduces program recording costs, and increases the coverage speed during emergency events and so forth.
