An upcoming national news channel is replacing human anchors with hyper-realistic AI-generated avatars. Channel 1, set to launch next year, plans to use digitally generated people and digital doubles of real actors who had their bodies scanned.
Demonstration videos show anchors that talk, look, and move like real humans, but were designed on computers using artificial intelligence technology.
Channel 1 plans to stream its news on TV apps and is set to add a translation feature to roll it out globally.
The outlet’s founder told DailyMail.com that misuse of AI-generated news is inevitable, but Channel 1 aims to ‘get out in front of this and create a responsible use of the technology.’
For the more important stories, actual human anchors will report from the scene, founder Adam Mosam told DailyMail.com. Part of this responsibility, he said, is being transparent with viewers about what footage is original and what footage is AI-generated.
For situations where original footage is unavailable – a news story about dinosaur extinction, for instance – AI-generated video will be shown onscreen and labeled as such.
The company likens this approach to courtroom sketches in a recently released teaser video. Los Angeles-based Channel 1 will launch on free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) – apps like Crackle, Tubi, or Pluto – in February or March, with a Channel 1 app to come in the summer, Mosam said.
The actual information contained in Channel 1’s reports will come from three sources: partnerships with yet-to-be-named legacy news outlets, commissioned freelance journalists, and AI-generated news reports drawn from trusted official sources like public records and government documents.
Mosam would not say which legacy news outlets have partnered with Channel 1. Addressing DailyMail.com’sstions about public concerns that AI can generate false or unreliable information, he clarified that humans will be involved in news production at every step.
‘We do have people in the loop, they just end up being more efficient’ due to their use of AI tools.
One of Channel 1’s main goals is to produce personalized news streams with an app that functions like TikTok and learns what each viewer wants to see.
‘We believe that we can create a better news product to really better inform people,’ Mosam said.
Rather than giving viewers a standardized broadcast that plays the same hour or two of content for everyone in the world, Channel 1 will allow consumers to select which news stories they watch.
‘The average person watches 25 minutes of news a night on cable, so that might be 9 or 10 stories,’ Mosam said.
