Xinhua News Agency has welcomed two news presenters powered by artificial intelligence* (AI).

Dressed in a suit and tie, the AI newsreaders can learn from live broadcast videos and read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor.

The digital doppelgangers* were modelled after the agency’s flesh-and-blood journalists, English-language anchor Zhang Zhao and his Chinese-language counterpart Qiu Hao, and were jointly developed by Xinhua and search engine company Sogou.com.

The two AI anchors were first seen in action at the 2018 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang.

The digital anchors offer certain advantages over humans, Xinhua said. They are available to provide coverage 24 hours a day on the Xinhua website and various social media platforms. This can reduce news production costs and improve efficiency on breaking news reports.

Net users on Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo questioned if these AI anchors would replace human reporters.

“The AI’s voice is too stiff, and it has trouble making the right pauses during speech,” one highly-rated comment reads. “Seems like some normal presenters are getting fired,” another user says.

China has become one of the leading global hubs for AI development in recent years. Several fields such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing have adopted machine learning systems for commercial uses.

(SD-Agencies)