China surprises us with the first English #AI anchor and the Twitter-dom says no...for now

His appearance and voice are modeled after Zhang Zhao, a real anchor at Xinhua. Honestly, it’s some pretty good modeling. The computer speaks in Zhang’s voice, and offers a believable image of him, complete with (almost) properly moving mouth and natural facial expressions.

The program uses machine learning to speak in Zhang’s voice, after listening through several sample audio clips. It’s one of many such rapidly developing technologies on the rise in China, and one we’ve covered before. Separate programs are used to conduct his body and facial gestures in a natural way, or to match his lips to the words he speaks.

This technology was launched by China Xinhua News today during the World Internet Conference - November 7-9, 2018 in Wuzhen, China.

 “That voice is a no,” writes one commenter on Twitter. “Keep working on that. It needs to be radio voice pleasant.”



“Looks like he has food in his mouth when he talks,” writes another.

A third commenter questions the necessity of virtual news anchors in the first place:

“Prefer real live human anchor.”

Some memes shared include:

A Homer Simpson meme protesting, "THE END IS NEAR"

A distorted Mark Zuckerberg photo who looked like he is thinking about doing the same genius thing...

And finally a Simon Cowell's famous "It's a no from me." line.

On a serious note, the iPad had the same response when it was first launched by Steve Jobs - how it 

"sounded like a feminine hygiene product"

"it's made for old people"

"iPad is for consuming not producing"

But now, people couldn't imagine living without it. 

Time will tell if indeed AI news anchors will be a regular thing of the future.

Source:

https://www.cultofmac.com/310020/ipad-haters-5th-anniversary/