“Fedha represents everyone.”
AInchor
Move over, AI-generated SEO spam — AI-powered news anchors are here.
Kuwait News — the oil-rich nation’s first English-speaking paper, notably — revealed its first AI-generated news personality, dubbed “Fedha,” on Twitter over the weekend, with the Kuwaiti publication’s deputy editor-in-chief, Abdullah Boftain, telling the French news outlet AFP that Fedha was introduced as an exploration of AI’s potential to create “new and innovative content.”
“I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News,” the blonde-haired AI-generated anchor said in Arabic during her first Twitter broadcast, as translated into English by the AFP. “What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions.”
Silver and Gold
As far as Fedha’s styling goes, her creators claim that their blonde-haired digital news presenter is designed to represent the masses. Naturally.
“Fedha represents everyone,” Boftail told the AFP.
Surely, a diversity win.
“Fedha is a popular, old Kuwaiti name that refers to silver, the metal,” the deputy editor added. “We always imagine robots to be silver and metallic in color, so we combined the two.”
We do have to admit: at first glance, Fedha is impressive. There’s still something a bit alien about her movements — and her eyes certainly have a bit of a machine glaze to them — but visually, she’s relatively convincing. Her voice, on the other hand, is still pretty tinny and robotic.
Ultimately, we’re not convinced that we’re about to see major US news networks put AI anchors on air. But all things considered? Even with her robotic stare, Fedha is still leaps and bounds beyond the world’s first AI news anchor, which was revealed in China back in 2018. Who knows where we’ll be in another five years — let alone another few months, if Fedha proves to be popular enough among the masses?
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