A journalist was alarmed after a newspaper replaced humans with AI in order to power fake newscasters.
The incident occurred with a local paper in Kauai, Hawaii, called The Garden Island and a former journalist for the publication revealed to Wired that it had been using AI.
Former employee, Guthrie Scrimgeour, revealed that the newspaper had recently become the first in the country to create AI-generated news anchors.
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The AI personas were made by Israeli AI company, Caledo, with one of the characters being a man named James and the other being a woman named Rose.
Their show is called TGI Today and the pair appear in videos shared online that are made to resemble real news reports from the newspaper’s content.
They give off a robotic sense, reading out the news in one tone and some people have been quick to point out just how ‘unnerving’ it is.
Taking to the Instagram comment section of their posts to share their reactions, one user wrote: “This is so grim.”
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Another person said: “This ain’t that. Keep journalism local.”
It was revealed that the newspaper began to invest in the new technology after its parent company was bought by the Carpenter Media Group.
The industry giant owns multiple local newspapers across the US.
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Caledo was founded by a married couple named Dina and Moti Shatner who spoke to Wired about why they offer this tech, explaining that it gives viewers a more ‘engaging’ way to read the news.
In the interview, Dina said: “Just watching someone read an article is boring. But watching people talking about a subject — this is engaging."
It seems that the bizarre AI broadcasters could be here to stay after the Shatners claimed that the media group are planning to expand it out to more newspapers.
While it is not known just how much the tech is costing Carpenter Media Group, it is thought that the new cash flow they will be making through advertisements on the video clips will be balancing out the price.
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It looks like journalism isn’t the only industry that is at risk of losing human jobs to robots.
Billionaire Elon Musk made a chilling announcement that Tesla will begin the production of humanoid robots as early as next year.
In fact, there are already two humanoid Tesla robots currently working in a factory where they are able to perform tasks autonomously.