Getty ImagesA startup is developing a news service powered by anchors created by artificial intelligence. Will it upend the decades-old parasocial relationship between TV viewers and the people they watch on screen?
This video would look natural on many news channels around the world.
For 22 minutes, a variety of sophisticated news anchors stand in front of the camera and dispassionately deliver the day's news. Video posted on social media. But none of them are real. Instead, anchors are generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
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The video is produced by Los Angeles-based Channel 1. Channel 1 is a startup founded by entrepreneurs Adam Mossam and Scott Zabielski, who will roll out AI-generated news on a streaming TV channel later this year. “It seemed like there was a really interesting opportunity to take the news user experience to the next level” by using AI to personalize content, Maussam says.
AI technology can also help translate scripts and interviews from one language to another. This is a feature Channel 1 demonstrated in a promotional video he shared in December.
Channel 1 is the latest demonstration of AI-powered news presenters from around the world. In Kuwait, An AI persona named Fedha It made headlines in Kuwait News. Hermes broke the news Broadcast on Greek national broadcaster ERT in May 2023. Korean broadcaster SBS took over the task Number of news stories presented to President Zein in AI-generated deepfakes over five months this year. There are others in India and Taiwan, but they are all created by AI.
But there is one important question that remains unanswered. That is, will viewers trust news delivered by AI rather than humans?
According to reports, trust in the people who deliver the news has fallen to an all-time low. Survey by public opinion polling company Ipsos. Only 42% of people in the UK trust TV newsreaders, a drop of 16 points in one year. Skepticism towards news presenters as independent arbiters of truth is a rare phenomenon in modern times, as many people choose to get their news from individual creators and influencers rather than from individual creators and influencers. I am.
Social media stars leverage a connection with their audience called parasocial influence. The term was first coined by academics at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. parasocial relationships This is defined as the fact that viewers of nightly news programs at the time believed that the anchor behind the desk was speaking directly to them through the camera. News presenters have become more than just journalists delivering news. They were friends and welcomed into your living room every night.
Social media influencers continue to adopt the same camera format Recognize your personal connection to great success. Christine H. Tran, a researcher on digital platforms and labor at the University of Toronto, said, “The label “parasocial'' goes beyond describing the closeness that individuals feel toward newscasters in remote locations, and has a broader meaning. It's interesting to see how it has evolved.” “You can have a parasocial relationship with Twitch streamers who are reporters and newscasters,” she says of the live streaming video service. “But apparently you can also have parasocial relationships with YouTubers, singers, and Instagram power couples.”
But whether AI can recreate personal connections is less certain. “You will never be able to have a relationship with an AI like you would with another human being,” Morsam admits. But he argues that people no longer want fairness. “We're not doing this because we think robots will do a better job than humans. That's ridiculous.”
AlamyThe idea that journalists don't read the news, even if it's computer-generated, is not all that unusual. “When I first started in journalism, we had actors read the news,” says Nick Newman, a senior fellow at the Reuters Institute for Journalism at the University of Oxford and a former editor at the BBC. . “People were okay with that.”
Newman believes the fact that journalists don't always read the news means the trial has a good chance of success, albeit with limitations. This is only useful for short news bulletins, but I'm not sure if viewers will form a parasocial relationship with his AI anchor. “I think humanity will continue to be very important in delivering news programs,” he says.
It's an uncertain unknown even for Tran. “Will AI personalities inspire similar parasociality if their broadcasts are accurately labeled as ‘AI content’ and viewers realize that their personal lives do not exist off-screen? ?” they ask. “It depends on whether platforms hosting AI presenters are expected to label their content as AI, as some platforms such as Instagram are considering moving.”
channel 1 and News GPTclaims to be the world's first completely AI-generated news channel, but there may be another question to answer: Is it possible to completely remove humans from the loop?
Currently, nearly a dozen staff members at Channel 1 are working to review AI-generated scripts and choose which stories to feature. Mosan said that at Channel 1, he goes through a 13-step process for each story before it airs to ensure that some of the issues with generative AI are not aired. These include hallucinations in which AI tools compose content, which is clearly prohibited in journalism. The management company is considering hiring a chief editor early next year.
Being able to actually spot newsworthy events and report on them is another element where AI may struggle, Mosan and Newman agree. Channel 1's test episode relied heavily on unearthed articles and footage shot by human journalists. “Without these sources, I have no idea how I would be able to cope if I were to be disconnected,” Newman said. “If that raw material doesn’t exist, the AI can’t work on anything at all.”
Mosan believes that some elements of the reporting process can be performed by AI, while others cannot. “It's never possible to do person-to-person information gathering or person-to-person interviews effectively,” he says. “But you could fly a drone and analyze what you see.” Channel 1's current plans do not include gathering news solely through AI, without human intervention. Is not …
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