So Back in November 2018, China’s state media made news history and computer technology history. Because they put an AI robot in charge of broadcasting the news. Then, last week, they made news again. They hired a female robot to broadcast the news. These are China’s AI news anchors. Is this a media trend?
So let’s go back to November 2018. The robot’s name is Qui Hao. It will deliver the news tirelessly, and it can do so all day every day. However, the scary thing is how human it looks. It wears a suit and tie, just like real (when I say real, I mean human) anchors do. It also nods it’s heads, blinks, and makes other human movements. Chinese IT support company Xinhua is the one who put this together. Qui Hao can also speak perfect English.
Then they bring in their second robot. It is a female they name Xin Xiaomeng. The same IT service company that created Qui also created Xin. This includes the help of some search engines. Like Qui, Xin has human movements and can speak perfect English. It wears a professional pink dress and has very well done hair, like a real woman news anchor would. In fact, Qui and Xin are often seen broadcasting the news together. They do it in record time. For instance, 3,400 news reports in less than 10,000 minutes. That averages to one news story about every three minutes.
This is what is scary. It’s scary enough that robots are taking up other jobs. The creepier thing is some are taking robots as lovers. Look, I know many people are fed up with the media today. I’m fed up with it. But hiring robots instead of human reporters is not the way. China’s AI news anchors aren’t going to make it better. Or are these robots a source of mind control? Who control these robots? Think about who programs these AI machines. Civil rights leader Malcolm X used to say, “The media is the most powerful thing on Earth”. The Chinese government knows this. Human anchors have their own feelings. Robots don’t. So are they using robots to further control the masses in way human journalists can not?