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votes
Startup Channel 1 creates news service presented by AI
Link information
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- Title
- These AI-generated news anchors are freaking me out
- Authors
- Kyle Orland
- Published
- Dec 15 2023
- Word count
- 608 words
Slightly related, but on Instagram Reels I've seen the "Breaking News" fish from Spongebob also doing something similar, just with a fish and AI generated voice. Not too sure how I feel about it, but it does make the news more entertaining I guess, which isn't necessarily a good thing.
Same ballpark. Does the presenter matter if the information is accurate?
Probably not! Thinking about it some more, I was thinking that maybe adding more layers between the info and the news isn't that great in terms of verification and stuff, but I doubt that makes a difference in general.
Might help some people engage with it, though the tech will probably end up becoming better suited to disinformation machines.
That's kinda what I was thinking too, though at the end of the day I feel like that's less of a news issue and more of a people/education issue? It's definitely way easier to put out a lot of fake content with AI than have to do still do the work to find real info.
The article describes a news service that pulls news from human authors and “trusted sources” and presents it using AI created presenters, AI translations and AI generated images.
It’s interesting and I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with this approach, but I expect it won’t be too long before the trusted sources end up suppling stories about food banks being a hot new restaurant or using racially insensitive images thanks to classic AI biases.
What does Tildes think?
I changed the title from the site as I didn’t feel it described the article well. Someone let me know if that’s not ok.
Presenters? Fine I suppose. That was kind of a sub plot in Deus Ex: Human Revolution though. Translations? Might help smaller news get picked up outside of smaller regions but based on the quality of translating without interpreting I can only assume this will go wrong.
Images? What? No. Any time you present an image along with a new story it needs to be as real as the story. I'd rather they show no images with the news rather than a single AI generated one.
DX:HR was the first thing that came to mind! Funny how the sci-fi version lowballed how realistic it can be.
There is a video of the translation linked in the article https://youtu.be/pOC9XwpVohA?si=SxrulfmyNMznk3KV no idea how accurate it is as my French is only good for restaurants, but it sounds coherent. Weird hearing that particularly US accent on him!
To your last point I do agree. I was trying to think of a scenario where I wouldn’t mind but really the images have to be authentic even if it’s clearly labelled as AI.
I think the main way it can be abused is by presenting false/misleading information. But that's not exclusive to ai, humans can do that all on their own.
In the past 5 to 10 years, I have noticed that documentaries largely abandoned the practice of explicitly labeling reenactments and fictionalized portions. A lot of times, they play audio by competent actors, complete with fake recording artifacts, making it difficult to distinguish from the real thing. There may be a subtle warning the first time they do it, but that is not reinforced later in the film or subsequent episodes. That is made worse by continuously switching between real historical recordings and fiction. I find that highly unethical.
I watched the video. On the face of it, it doesn't seem particularly egregious. However, I fear that many companies will use the technique to blur the lines between fact and fiction as documentaries already do.
I don't like the manipulation of the French man's face. Dubbing over him is fine to me, but even in that case news shows usually keep the original audio at a lower volume (which serves as a guarantee that no manipulation took place) . Transforming his entire face into a person who speaks perfectly English feels very disrespectful. I would prefer for my cultural signature to remain if I am ever featured on the news. Not to mention the integrity of my facial expressions. And if that doesn't bother you, try to imagine a young Sub-Saharan African artificially modulated to speak like Piers Morgan on BBC News. This essentially erases part of the speaker's culture and identity. That is so problematic.
This is bad news for factual journalism.
Based on the sample, what I like is the lack of vocal inflections coming from the ‘newscasters,’ it takes away a lot of subtle biases you can hear in broadcast news.