China Released An AI Female News Anchor, Making Human Journalists Lose Their Jobs

Jyotis - Feb 24, 2019

The AI anchors could talk and stand simultaneously. Their new ability will come to the public on the next Two Sessions.

On February 19^th, Xinhua, a state news outlet from China introduced a new member named Xin Xiaomeng to its groups of journalists.

Xin is entirely different from any other member who is working on Xinhua. “She” never took part in any journalism course or any university. She is not human. More exactly, Xin is an AI product manufactured by Xinhua and Sogou.

According to the revelation from the producer, Xin Xiaomeng is “the world’s first female AI news anchor.” She will have an official debut during China’s Two Sessions political conference in the next March.

In addition to Xin Xiaomeng, many other AI news anchors will participate in the upcoming event.

On November 2018, Xinhua partnered with Sogou to develop the unprecedented male AI news anchors. These AI products can make a speech in both Chinese and English.

On the release date of Xin, these two companies also said that their AI anchors could talk and stand simultaneously. Their new ability will come to the public on the next Two Sessions.

Until now, these AI journalists have conducted about 3,400 reports with the total duration of more than 10,000 minutes. The data was gathered from Tencent News.

In the coming times, the state news agency seems to make use of the AI journalists, instead of human journalists. If they don’t want to lose their jobs, human journalists will have no choice but hard-work.