B&T’s always thought the newsreader gig a rather cushy one. A 30-minute bulletin minus the stories, sports, weather and ads acquaints to about seven-minutes of reading the autocue.
And now the job could possibly be one of the first to go amid the current AI putsch.
In news no journalist wants to hear, Kuwait News has just unveiled the country’s first virtual news presenter generated by using artificial intelligence, with plans for her to read online bulletins.
The blonde-haired, black-suited, Arabic-speaking woman goes by the name of ‘Fedha’ and, according to Kuwait News bosses, represents the country’s eclectic population of Kuwaitis and expatriates.
“I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News. What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she said in Arabic.
The broadcaster’s deputy editor Abdullah Boftain said the move was a test of AI’s potential to offer “new and innovative content” and would most likely stick to reading short news bulletins on platforms such as Twitter.
Boftain added: “Fedha is a popular, old Kuwaiti name that refers to silver, the metal. We always imagine robots to be silver and metallic in colour, so we combined the two.”
Watch ‘Fedha’ go below:
أول مذيعة في #الكويت تعمل بالذكاء الاصطناعي
• #فضة.. مذيعة #كويت_نيوز الافتراضية
• ما هي نوعية الأخبار التي تفضلونها بتقديم #فضة زميلتنا الجديدة؟ .. شاركونا آراءكم pic.twitter.com/VlVjasSdpb
— كويت نيوز (@KuwaitNews) April 8, 2023
Social media reaction to ‘Fedha’ appeared mainly positive although it was less enthusiastic from journalists whose jobs were threatened.
One journo asking: “What do you guys think of her, are real-life newsreaders about to be taken over by robots??”
While another added: “Love this idea.”
According to the creators of the technology, ‘Fedha’ uses advanced natural language processing algorithms to read and interpret news stories and then presents them in a manner that is indistinguishable from a human news anchor.
However, the tech has raised concerns about the future of journalism and the role of AI in the media industry.
Critics say that the use of AI-generated news presenters will lead to a loss of jobs for human news anchors and could lead to the spread of biased or inaccurate information if the algorithms are not properly monitored.
