China’s latest AI news anchor mimics human voices and gestures in 3D


Chinese state news agency Xinhua has added an AI 3D news anchor to its lineup of virtual presenters. Named Xin Xiaowei, the publicity stunt avatar was jointly developed by Xinhua and search engine Sogou. The 3D anchor is modeled on Zhao Wanwei, a real-life reporter for the news agency. Her digital counterpart is brought to life by “multi-modal recognition and synthesis, facial recognition and animation and transfer learning,” according to Sogou. The company claims that this allows it to imitate human voices, facial expressions, lip movements, and mannerisms using only text inputs. [Read: New Zealand’s first AI police officer reports for duty] Check it out in…

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