If You Are A News Anchor Man/Women/Other,

or almost any television presenter,

 now might be a good time to start looking for a new job, China’s state news agency Xinhua unveiled two very realistic looking AI news anchors that can “tirelessly” report the news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the world, if the two AI broadcasters who made their debut last week during China’s annual World Internet Conference are anything to go by, the future of human news anchors looks very bleak, the newest additions to Xinhua’s team of broadcasters not only look disturbingly realistic, but they can also move their mouths to match the audio, blink, nod their head in emphasis, or raise their eyebrows, but their most important quality is that they can work 24/7, both on the agency’s website and on social media platforms, greatly “reducing news production costs and improving efficiency”,

“AI anchors have officially become members of the Xinhua News Agency reporting team,” Xinhua told the South China Morning Post, “They will work with other anchors to bring you authoritative, timely, and accurate news information in both Chinese and English.” so far, the response to what Xinhua called “the world’s first AI news anchors” has been split, while some declared themselves impressed with the two anchors, others have said that they fall into the “uncanny valley”, where avatars or objects that closely resemble humans make viewers feel more uncomfortable than those who look obviously artificial,

have a look at this video, but before thinking that you can tell the difference remember this is the first attempt, try and imagine what the tenth attempt will look like! Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield told the BBC that Xinhua’s achievement was a “good first effort” and that “we will see it improve over time”.