搜狗与新华社合作发布AI合成主播 – Sina
What happened: State-backed Xinhua News Agency rolled out two AI TV anchors with NYSE-listed search engine company Sogou. Uploading text transcripts to the back-end, the AI will directly produce human-like visual and voice news reporting. During the development of the technology, facial recognition and other AI training technology were used to model two real anchors from China Central Television (CCTV) to help set up the AI figures. CCTV says the two AI anchors will report news on their official WeChat account.
Why it’s important: China’s facial recognition technology is developing rapidly with increasing deployments in real cases. What’s widely expected at the moment is the AI TV anchor technology’s integration with robotics, for robots that are just like real people. Meanwhile, the AI anchors have raised discussion of AI’s impact on labor supply and demand, which fears strong AI R&D initiative in the country will soon allow machines to conquer some fields that are dominated by humans at the moment.