Channel 1 AI released a promotional video explaining how the service will provide personalized news coverage to users from finance to entertainment.
This won’t hilariously backfire at all…
It’s already scripted and choreographed, with a team of people making decisions behind any anchor.
So yes, this fundamentally changes nothing.
it changes things if you’ve ever wanted to become a new anchor
The example where an interview of a victim of Hurricane Ciaran, originally in French, was deepfaked to be speaking English, was pretty scary. Some people will think that it’s just for convenience, but for me, it’s a step too far down the slippery slope. If they were to do the same for a politician, a slight nuance in how a phrase was translated could change everything.
It’s only a matter of time till someone moves a stock market for profit with a deep fake. If it hasn’t happened already.
Yeah for any sort of interviews I’d rather they kept the current convention of using a voice over, often after a 1-2 second clip of the original audio. It’s obvious that it’s a translation done by the media and not the exact original words of the source
a leaky abstraction is better because it reveals what is actually happening. That is better to me too. Heck I worry about the voice-overs giving an unfair or inaccurate version of what is being said.
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.
Don’t you mean lots of extra fingers on too many hands?
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.
“they intend to re-create events not captured by camera using generative AI,”
That’s going to cause all sorts of problems.
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.
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.
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.
Things are starting to get weird faster than I thought wierd would get here.
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!
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.
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.
I got to about two and a half minutes before I shut it off.
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.
…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.
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 nominate this for worst idea of the decade.
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
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.
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.
