China’s state news agency Xinhua announced on Tuesday that an artificial intelligence female news reader, called Xin Xiaomeng, will debut next month. According to Xinhua, the new-age anchor will make "her” debut during the upcoming Two Sessions political meetings at the start of March. The news agency also released a photo of the computer-generated news anchor wearing a pink and maroon dress. Xin is the second AI-based news anchor who will work for the news agency, and was developed in collaboration with search engine Sogou. Earlier the company had helped the channel develop the world's first AI male news anchor for English bulletins. It's not clear yet if Xin will speak in Chinese or English. China's Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday unveiled the world’s first female #AI news anchor, “Xin Xiaomeng,’ who will make her professional debut during the upcoming meetings of the country's national legislature and top political advisory body #TwoSessions pic.twitter.com/9gGDpfwfil — People's Daily, China (@PDChina) February 20, 2019 An artificial intelligence (AI) system has been used to create the presenters' voices, lip movements and expressions and they bear an uncanny resemblance to real human beings. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. 🤖 — Asad Hashim (@AsadHashim) February 20, 2019 Make me feel scared — bilibilixmy (@bilibilixmy) February 20, 2019 Artificial Intelligence on Television well China please😪 Congratulations to the Technology though✊ — Phelisters Wegesa🇹🇿 (@PWegesa) February 20, 2019 China literally has a billion people. Why does it need an AI to read the news? — Akib (@CoinShipper) February 20, 2019 What a crazy world we live in! — Adeel Janjua (@janjuahadeel) February 20, 2019 This is where China's government hopes journalism is heading: — Rob Schmitz 史明智 (@rob_schmitz) February 20, 2019 Xinhua has been experimenting with AI-driven journalism in recent years, and even had an intern robot reporter called "Inspire". In 2017, Jia-Jia, a humanoid robot got everyone talking online after an interview conducted by a journalist, but made more headlines for her appearance. Another humanoid robot named Sophia has rocketed to stardom and has attended TV shows and flirted with actors.
