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Kuwait News Introduces Fedha, the AI Anchor

Wednesday, April 12, 2023Wednesday, April 12, 2023By Macie Jones
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Kuwait News Introduces Fedha, the AI Anchor

Kuwait News, an affiliate of the Kuwait Times, introduced the world to Fedha, an AI news anchor who speaks fluent Arabic and wants to know the kind of news you’re interested in.

Fedha made her debut on Twitter yesterday and began reporting the news of the day. Fedha was hired, are AIs hired, to present new and innovative content and hear viewers’ opinions. Kuwait News’ Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Abdullah Boftain, says Fedha may be updated to speak using a Kuwaiti accent and read the news online.

Not the First AI News Anchor

Fedha isn’t the world’s first AI news anchor. Media outlets have been experimenting with AI news anchors the last several years with varying degrees of success. China’s Ren Xiaorong has been anchoring for the People’s Daily, a Chinese outlet. Ren can only answer preset questions which makes it difficult for her to interview subjects. Zhang Zhao is the world’s first to anchor another Chinese outlet Xinhua.

Will AI Anchors Take Off

It’s hard to tell if AI anchors are the future. News platforms are struggling and the talking head on TV is falling out of favor for younger viewers. The evening news may be highly rated programs maybe highly rated programming for networks, but it pales in comparisons to streaming video. And news streaming video hasn’t taken off. CNN+ failed to find an audience.

Also, people can’t tolerate looking at human-realistic renderings for long periods of time. People get weirded out after watching near humans after a while and prefer to see the real thing. This could be solved by technology however and products like Metahuman will only get better over time.

I do think we’ll see more AI avatars on the Internet. We’re seeing more AI generated models and rappers coming to phones near you and we should expect to see more of them as the technology improves.

In the end, it could be a wash. It’ll be the same content or misinformation delivered by a real human or a generated construct.

-MJ