On Tuesday, China's state-run news agency Xinhua announced a surprise addition to its news team with a new host, Xin Xiaomeng.
But Xin never went to journalism school - or any educational institution - because "she" is not a real person. It is an amazingly realistic artificial intelligence system developed with the participation of Xinhua and the search engine Sogou, who made it the world's first TV presenter in the form of an AI woman.
"Two Sessions", three AI systems
Xin will debut for the first time on the March "Two Sessions" program, named after two annual meetings held with representatives of China's legislature and its highest political advisory body.
She will not be the only host robot covering the event. In November, Xinhua and Sogou unveiled the first AI TV presenters - two male robots trained to deliver news in English or Chinese.
On the same day, Xinhua and Sogou announced that these AI systems were able to stand and speak at the same time, and they will demonstrate this new ability by covering the Two Sessions program with a real female colleague.
Promotional video:
Working hard
When Xinhua debuted its AI presenters in November, the news agency said each of them could “work 24 hours a day on the agency’s official website and on various social media platforms, reducing the cost of producing news and increasing its efficiency..
Since then, according to Tencent News, the AI has run 3,400 news reports, taking up 10,000 minutes of airtime.
It is clear that Xinhua is actually planning to use AI in its work, and adding another host robot to the news team should only increase the productivity of this work.
Sergey Lukavsky