None of these anchors are real: Channel 1 plans for AI to generate news, broadcasters

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 372 points –
None of these anchors are real: Channel 1 plans for AI to generate news, broadcasters
usatoday.com

Channel 1 AI released a promotional video explaining how the service will provide personalized news coverage to users from finance to entertainment.

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This won't hilariously backfire at all...

I wonder if they've learned anything from the infamous Nothing Forever incident, or the infamous Infinite Steam incident, or any of the other various incidents.

To be fair, it looks like this actually has human editors and isn’t just running as a hands free experiment.

Are these the ones where the AI became incredibly racist?

Nothing Forever got a 14 day ban for generating this standup routine:

“There’s like 50 people here and no one is laughing. Anyone have any suggestions? I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness. Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone. Or something about how transgender people are ruining the fabric of society. But no one is laughing, so I’m going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time. Where’d everybody go?”

As for Infinite Steam, the only references to the banned clip seem to be on Reddit - and so a massive pain in the ass to access - but I remember the clip in question had Seymour saying something like "Oh no, I burned the Jews!"

Tay was such a hilarious snafu. It is, in all likelihood, one of the most influential lessons on AI. Modern models hold no memory of previous conversations for a very good reason.

Sounds a bit like the recent exploit for saying a word forever. I wonder how long until these break down and start spewing their source code.

yes..."hilarious"...

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"they intend to re-create events not captured by camera using generative AI,"

That's going to cause all sorts of problems.

don't worry they've stated that they'll clearly mark it with an arbitrary symbol, so no one will possibly think it's the real deal.

The deepest of ironies in a company allegedly made to report "facts", primarily using artificiality to do so.

Even if they are completely earnest and honest, the tech they are helping spearhead is going to completely change how information is approached and will be one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge, we are going to face as a society in a long time. This is really unnerving to watch develop in front of my eyes.

I feel like they're shooting themselves in the foot with this. If AI reporting gets to a good enough point, people can just have an AI on their phone tell them the news report, rather than a video of an AI giving the report, broadcast from a central server. They will lose their viewers

The use of unrelated b-roll and stock footage is already a nightmare in this way. One burning trash can becomes the new standard-bearer for any protest they disagree with for the next year or two. Now they can fine tune it to location ...

Honestly, for the news, these sorts of tricks for effect NEED to be clearly and constantly marked during their use. It is actually dangerous the way they currently do it, imho.

I'm biased enough towards transparency, though I think if they do use AI then they should have to reveal the prompt and model used to make it on top of clearly and constant marking showing it is not actual footage.

Wonderful. Nothing will help people differentiate between real, trustworthy news and fake opinion-laden disinformation like AI generated people and content!

/s for the kids in the back.

pour one out for the kids in the back.

Couldn't be any worse than the current model for televised news, which is 2-4 buzzword parrots all attempting to shout over each other without ever attempting to address what the others are saying.

Being human doesn't make it good.

Wake me up when there's a better medium than just plain text.

Yeah, the news already has standard looks and standard cadence while reading scripts. A computer made anchor won't go off script, always speaks the same and doesn't decide to change the hairstyle.

God, the cadence alone keeps me from watching the news. Just give me a text article.

It's why the Onion can make such great fake news coverage, or movies use news coverage as an introduction to world building. It's very reproducable...

If they make one of them look and speak like Morbo the Annihilator, I might actually watch.

Like, with the anti-human sentiment and everything.

First Anchor: And today, a local law firm files the first lawsuit in a series over a deadly salmonella outbreak linked to cantaloupe.

Morbo: Next time, we will put the salmonella in more than just the canteloupe.

or maybe:

Morbo: Canteloupe tonight, Bridegroom has the runs!

............what the fuck is Channel 1?

Looks like it'll be one of those free streaming channels on things like Pluto TV. So not an actual TV channel.

Russians having their flashbacks of the main war propaganda network in their homeland

Hello, I'm Eliza Cassan, and this is a Channel 1 breaking news announcement.

A crackpot video game nerd caused a viral sensation when he livestreamed himself blocking traffic in Times Square, shouting loudly that reality is actually just following the script of some video game from the 1990's, before consuming 10 vials of Zyme, assaulting a pigeon, and then dying of a heart attack.

Onlookers reactions were varied, but most continued on perfectly linear paths, walking by the incident without seeming to notice it.

This segment has been brought to you by Nuke Soda, now available in exciting new lemon-lime. Nuke your thirst with Nuke soda!

Does Nuke Soda have electrolytes?

Processing query...

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Yes.

Would you like to know more?

Things are starting to get weird faster than I thought wierd would get here.

This felt a lot like Naked News but y'know I'd rather look at titties while being given a bland delivery and near robotic gestures.

But AI, so I'm sure naked AI news anchors are right around the corner.

Ha! I remember that. I watched it once or twice for the novelty of it. I seem to recall that it was very bland except for the naked women. According to Wikipedia, they are still around and I think that may be more shocking than this AI news.

As far as news quality goes I think it was actually a good program but the whole "local news" format makes it feel dated and using a green screen 90% of the time makes it feel cheap.

An you'll be able to adjust everything....voice, boob size, feminity or masculinity and muscularity.

Maybe you can make them look exactly like your highschool sweetheart or the lady at the bus stop that you always wanted to talk to. Or for the gay guys and women you can make the guy look like James Bond and he'll even talk to you personally by first name.... Hello there Jonathan, tonight I gotta tell you about this tragic accident at the tallest senior citizen Bolivian rollercoaster.... everyone stood up on a turn. Oh, it was horrible as they all fell 23 stories onto the rocky mountain side right through that fresh La Paz air.

Might even be able to adjust the "facts" they say, given a malicious enough company.

Probably you can set it to Alarming, cutesy, nature news, local mom news, Republican filter, dioses Christian rock band related news. Possibly highschool style news mostly about the hottie you used to like? With proper ads...always Cocaine Cola!...hey Stacey, sho loves it an so should you!

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This tech is going to completely derail communication and discussion in modern society and all people here are talking about is how weird they look or how it's "the same" as news already. That's...not great.

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Fucking hell we're at the point of having Eliza Cassan from Deus Ex Human Revolution be reality aren't we

Okay... so honest question: how long did it take for you to close the linked video?

In my case it was about 45 seconds. The weird hands/body language creeped me out and when combined with the synthetic voices I just couldn't take it.

It's only going to get better. Soon you won't be able to tell.

I saw it all, albeit without audio. It honestly didn't look that bad to me. They seemed a bit stiff and something was off with the hand gestures, other than that it was visually passable to me.

I wonder how they did it though, and how procedural it can get.

The voice didn't sync up to the lips and hand gestures when I watched it. That was enough for me.

Even AI have no clue what to do with their hands.

I'm waiting for the youth version where the anchor is dropped into an endless runner game.

I watched about 10 minutes before I got bored

I'm convinced the AI had the hand on a loop. It's like watching someone's first presentation in speech and debate class. It will look better eventually, but I doubt it'll figure out the subtle emphasis great body language adds to speech.

I nominate this for worst idea of the decade.

NFTs though

NFTs sucked hard, but this is Fake News on ketamine mixed with steroids. Maybe not this channel, but it's gonna be a thing. This is wild.

Yeah, In gonna need names of everyone who contributed a dollar to that before I use it as a news source.

More and more, the human element is being removed from the news. The most horrific events will be reported by blank-faced robots with no empathy to human emotions, at least in AI channels. Imagine what kind of emotional intelligence future people will have when they constantly hear stories from poker-faced (and voiced) human-like images.

I'm not sure what idea I hate more: Blank faced puppet cg reporters reciting horrible events, or cg puppets acting sad about their reports. Both are just...not fun.

I mean I think part of this is that the technology is reaching a point where emotion is actually reasonably emulatable.

Hopefully we may be able to get some, at least intellectualized, empathy in models in the future. https://laion.ai/blog/open-empathic/

I fear that for this kind of work, because of the stakeholders, the goal will be passable acting and not a genuine regard for people's emotional well-being.

Makes complete sense. I feel zero loyalty or trust towards what anchors are reading from a prompt. Save money and show me random ai generated ones. Better yet let me choose. I'll pick new ones each

Their hand moments took me out instantly. Just the same opening and closing of hands with some variation thrown it made it feel weird.

The voices had a weird pacing, too. They sounded very close to real but just not quite, in an uncanny-valley sort of way.

This is wild. I almost wonder if it’s actually a real thing or an elaborate hoax. It’s impressive in either case.

As far as the concept of AI news, there are obvious drawbacks but also some advantages. In particular, the anchors are less animated and emotional, which eliminates quite a bit of bias. Cable news anchors with their incredulity, snide remarks, and expressions have done a lot to help ruin the news. That alone can easily undermine a story or a guest in a way that causes the audience to pick a side.

The idea of using AI to scour public records and create stories is another really cool idea. There’s so much out there and not enough reporters with the time or inclination to investigate everything.

I’m not too keen on the AI generated imagery, although traditional news outlets essentially do the same thing. It’s a dangerous thing to be presented with artificial pictures and videos in a news format. Before long, you can’t distinguish between reality and artificial, which is more or less the same problem a significant portion of the country has had since the 2016 election. In that case, they were mostly fed stupid memes and fabricated stories on social media. This is a completely different level. In the wrong hands, this is a weapon of mass destruction.

If it means the end of overpaid talking heads then I’m all for it.

So the executives will be overpaid by the amount the talking heads made plus the amount they were already overpaid by

They'll get rid of everyone. It will just be a few at the top that already have power and money. A more efficient version of what we have today.

"More efficient" in that there is zero point to be opposed by anyone else down the line. While it's not like we're getting a lot of resistance from media workers all the time right now, real people are going to have a breaking point if things go too far in some direction. Now all executives will need to worry about is appeasing an audience, and with robot reporters that will say anything and everything, that's not a problem in the slightest.

bravisimo !!!! why paying to have real humans to say the news, when AI can do it for you? right ? it does not sound dystopian at all, just AI, that will tell you what ever they want it to tell you!(not that now this in't happening.)\

Edit: I didn't mention legislation's, like they don't exist, jobs like this one will be lost, and no one will do something because some politicians will benefit from that. And maybe this is the beginning, wait till they start with other jobs(starting if not started).

Oh hey we're just entering a period where it's becoming harder and harder to tell what is legitimate information and what is AI generated propaganda? Why not demolish our credibility by joining the AI propaganda crowd!

I mean it's not like anyone is taking courses in ethics in journalism anymore anyway, it's just the "real world" version of Facebook outrage as "news" now anyway...

Man I miss being 12 and looking forward to what the future had in store. I used to say I want to be immortal just so I could see what awesome things we made in the future, now all I want is to never reach the future we're barreling towards...

We just have to have a personalized AI to read the news for you and give you a condensed "important bits you would find" version. Which you ignore because you're not that into the news that comes out lately. Cue dead internet theory again for the #789 time.

Brings a new meaning to POV that "The real Journalists are doing print"

I watched the whole thing. I think most anchors talked a bit too slow which seemed fake. Those hand gestures were weird especially for (I don't know his name) the black anchor. Very rigid fingers.

The main cringe section was the movie section where they tried to have the black anchor act sassy but that's hard with a very level speaking tone and speed.

Honestly, I'd watch something like that once a week.it was nice to get a broad cross section of news.

I wonder if they'll cry "the AI did it!" when the chat bot hallucinates up some random misinformation.

Me waiting for the news channels and free lance writers to start asking them for money for all of this. Also fact checking is already non-existent in news is going to get so much worse. Can't wait for this to start up their own tik tok account.