By Dipankar Mukherjee It’s 2025. The Carson Entertainment Group is inviting bids from main tv networks to personal the AI-Likeness of the legendary discuss present host, Johnny Carson. The profitable bid is anticipated to run into a pair of billion {dollars}. It would give the community rights to create & personal the world’s first AI Talk Show host, mimicking Carson’s look, behavioural traits and signature comedic type. Johnny’s AI resemblance, powered by Meta, would work together with friends in real-time and do all the analysis and scripting for the present by itself. It would spontaneously provide you with questions, responses, and even jokes whereas interviewing the friends. And every part could be delivered with Carson’s unmistakable aptitude and comedian timing. The seeds of this landmark occasion had been sown in 2023, with a worldwide wave of media firms launching their AI Newsreader bots and Meta commissioning AI personas of Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and Tom Brady. AI Newsreaders Sana (India Today), Soundarya (PowerTV), AI Kaur (CNBC TV18), and Lisa (OdishaTV) had been amongst the first to emerge out of India. Indonesian community tvOne launched three digital presenters: Nadira, Sasya, and Bhoomi. Malaysian community Astro Awani rolled out Joon & Monica. Taiwan’s FTV News unveiled an AI Weather Presenter, whereas Kuwait launched Fedha. These AI Newsreaders had been unique characters, not modelled by any actual information presenter. In distinction, the world’s first AI information anchor, developed in 2018 by China’s Xinhua, resembled their common newsreader, Zhang Zhao. Irrespective, the solely intent for every of these AI bots was to tirelessly & precisely ship a steady stream of information content material sans any emotional core. They may converse in a number of languages with good diction, regarded like runway fashions, and at all times had a nice manner. The networks used them as speaking factors for over a 12 months, making them a component of their acquisition & engagement technique. But past the preliminary novelty of the photorealism, there was little these AI Newsreaders needed to provide. They sounded robotic, with zero to little or no emotive high quality in their voices. Plus, they largely delivered prolonged monologues with none dialog with friends or co-anchors. It was virtually as if Siri or Alexa had been studying an RSS newsfeed. And then, in 2024, every part modified. The elections in India and in the United States that 12 months noticed report viewership, and the broadcasters had been prepared with the subsequent breed of extra highly effective AI Newsreaders. This was a pivotal 12 months for AI expertise and irrevocably modified newsroom storytelling. From simply being plastic faces with droning voices merely studying the information, the new variations with diverse expressions, intonations & pauses had been now presenting the information. Modelled after the speech patterns, questioning type and physique language of famend TV Newsanchors, these new AI presenters had been now a step nearer to changing the want for his or her human counterparts. At the backend, the AI workflows had been in a position to ingest huge tracts of real-time knowledge, instantaneously correlate with historic content material, precisely supply related archival footage, after which auto-generate a whole script together with the required intercuts for the AI presenter. All the human editors needed to do was approve after which hit a button for it to go stay. The months spanning pre-election debates, exit polls, after which poll counting noticed AI News Hosts working uninterrupted 24×7. Audiences had been captivated by watching the first-ever stay interview between an AI bot and a human political candidate. Some clips from that broadcast that includes incisive cross-questioning by the AI bot went viral on social media. In 2024, the first few impartial digital information startups cropped up, with 100% AI-driven information channels on YouTube. The conventional editorial group was changed by a single AI mannequin, synced to syndicated wire companies and to social media. They launched with a whole group of AI News Hosts, together with some subject material specialists for Finance, Military, Politics and Sports. In weeks and months, it grew to become regular to look at an AI News Anchor in dialog with an AI Sports skilled after which interview a human soccer participant collectively. To nobody’s shock, Weather News grew to become 100% AI-driven. But the actual disruption got here in the Financial Market information style, with AI information anchors rising as the clear viewers desire. By the finish of 2024, Nielsen viewers surveys confirmed an unprecedented belief rating for AI News Anchors, with some of them having change into reputable social media celebrities sporting digital garments and equipment sponsored by main vogue manufacturers. As AI continues to blur the traces, one can’t assist however marvel: what’s subsequent in this journey? How will we navigate between innovation and authenticity? Will we yearn for real human join? Only time will inform. But one factor’s for certain: newsroom storytelling isn’t going again to the way it was. (The creator is Dipankar Mukherjee, Chief Innovation Officer, Nihilent Limited, and the views expressed in this text are his personal)
https://cxotoday.com/story/future-past-present-storytelling-in-the-age-of-ai-news-anchors/
Storytelling in the Age of AI News Anchors
