Cortana [Courtesy of Microsoft]
Xiaolce, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) chat robot took a role of a weather reporter on Chinese Shanghai Dragon TV’s live breakfast show. The AI chat bot started its show on Tuesday, by saying "I'm happy to start my new work on the winter solstice," the robot, impressed a lot with her cute voice.
The chat bot, Xiaolce is software developed by Microsoft using smart cloud and big data. According to Microsoft, breakthroughs in text-to-speech AI helped Xiaolce to gain linguistic naturalness. Also, her voice is made even closer to a real person’s with the technology.
Xiaolce can make instant comments based on weather and big data to naturally continue a report or a short conversation.
In recent years, Microsoft had been working on AI based communication and big data. Cortana is one of them. Originally a holographic AI computer from Halo game series became real when the AI was installed on windows smartphones and later versions of Windows for PC. Xiaolce can be described as a Chinese version of Cortana.
However, according to The Times of India, wonders and surprises about chattering AI robot put aside, fears are rising among human reporters and TV anchors. They fear that a smart (big data based), sweet talking robot may one day, take their place.
This is not the first time some robot tried to take over someone else’s media job in China. Social media giant Tencent recently tested its report writing robot, which wrote a flawless article that spread fear amongst its fellow journalists.
아주경제 박세진 기자 = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
