Industry
Xinhua and UBTech unveil humanoid robot news anchors Xinyan and Xinyu
China's state news agency Xinhua unveiled two humanoid robot news anchors at the World Media Summit in Beijing on 5 November, describing them as the world's first bionic humanoid robot news anchors. That "world's first" label is Xinhua's own claim.
Who built them
The life-size anchors are named Xinyan (female) and Xinyu (male), EastFrontier reported, citing Xinhua. Hong Kong-listed UBTech supplied the technology, from bionic skin, hardware and an operating system to an emotion model and production of the robots. Film director Zhang Yimou was lead image designer, and Xinhua says it fully owns the intellectual property.
Where their words come from
The anchors draw content from Xinhua Yudian, the agency's AI agent for current-affairs news. UBTech chief executive Zhou Jian said the robots pull reviewed information in real time to avoid AI hallucinations. Qian Tong, director of Xinhua's New Media Center, described them as a supporting role in the newsroom that would help with presentation, output in several languages and live interaction.
Demonstration, not deployment
So far the robots have appeared at the summit, where one read news of the forum's opening on stage. Zhou listed possible next settings, including study bases, city reception venues and overseas cultural exchanges, but gave no dates. EastFrontier noted that every account so far originates with Xinhua, so speech quality, latency and cost have not been tested by outside reporters.