Demand for AI virtual anchors set to increase

AI virtual anchors - the world's first virtual human hosts produced by Chinese tech company Sogou and Xinhua News Agency, will go into mass production with more vivid facial expressions and gestures, to deliver real-time broadcasts for media and audiences from home and abroad, according to Sogou.

Seven months after making their debut at the Fifth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province in November, the robotic avatars have already found new jobs at Abu Dhabi Media in the United Arab Emirates in May and Russian news agency ITAR-Tass in early June.

Just like their counterparts at Xinhua, they can broadcast news based on text inputs with the image of a human host. The appropriate mouth movements, pronunciation and intonations, and natural facial expressions make them almost indistinguishable from real people. The only difference is that they speak Arabic or Russian languages instead of Chinese, according to Wang Yanfeng, general manager of the voice interaction technique center of Sogou.