The process of creating news (and especially news in video format) is a rather laborious, but at the same time creative process. And, apparently, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua decided to relieve its employees from routine to some extent. Together with internet giant Alibaba, they launched the world's first "smart manufacturing platform" for creating news videos without any human intervention.
You can study the platform yourself on the official website of the project (just warn you right away: everything is in Chinese). The official announcement took place at the 6th China Media Industry Integration and Development Conference in Chengdu, and the platform was launched this Thursday December 27th.
The work of the system was demonstrated at the conference. After launch, the system produced 186 short videos. Of these, 97 were released by AI alone. The other 89 were AI-created and slightly human-edited. All local media now have access to the platform to produce high-quality short videos. True, first they need to go through the accreditation and certification procedure on the site.
Alibaba CEO Shao Xiaofeng said the platform will allow journalists and editors to devote themselves to more valuable reporting work, in which humans cannot be replaced by machines. Apparently, Mr. Shao forgot that the first virtual presenter debuted in China quite recently. So, it is quite possible that soon the news agency will do without people altogether.
Vladimir Kuznetsov