Chinese state-owned Xinhua news agency, on Tuesday, 19 February announced its second AI news anchor that has been created in collaboration with search engine Sogou. The world's first female AI news anchor will be called Xin Xiaomeng and will make her debut during the upcoming Two Sessions political meet in China, People's Daily China reported.
The news outlet's first AI anchor, Qui Hao, was unveiled at China's world Internet Conference in November 2018.
These, however, are not the first attempts by the news agency to integrate Artificial Intelligence into news.
The bot, however, was a failed attempt as it was having a hard time communicating smoothly – sometimes taking too long to respond or not making any sense when answering a question.
According to a Quartz report, Xinhua has said that its robotic employees have taken to their roles with enthusiasm. Since launching in November, they have put out about 3,400 reports totalling over 10,000 minutes in reading time. Human TV anchors may have something to worry about after all.
(With inputs from People’s Daily, China and Quartz)
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