These AI-generated news anchors are freaking me out

Max Headroom as prophecy.

Enlarge / Max Headroom as prophecy. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Channel 1)

Here at Ars, we've long covered the interesting potential and significant peril (and occasional silliness) of AI-generated video featuring increasingly realistic human avatars. Heck, we even went to the trouble of making our own "deepfake" Mark Zuckerberg back in 2019, when the underlying technology wasn't nearly as robust as it is today.

But even with all that background, startup Channel 1's vision of a near-future where AI-generated avatars read you the news was a bit of a shock to the system. The company's recent proof-of-concept "showcase" newscast reveals just how far AI-generated videos of humans have come in a short time and how those realistic avatars could shake up a lot more than just the job market for talking heads.

“...the newscasters have been changed to protect the innocent”

To be clear, Channel 1 isn't trying to fool people with "deepfakes" of existing news anchors or anything like that. In the first few seconds of its sample newscast, it identifies its talking heads as a "team of AI-generated reporters." A few seconds later, one of those talking heads explains further: "You can hear us and see our lips moving, but no one was recorded saying what we're all saying. I'm powered by sophisticated systems behind the scenes."

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