Beijing: China has unveiled what are described as the world's first bionic humanoid robot news anchors at a forum dedicated to artificial intelligence and Chinese modernisation during the 7th World Media Summit. The two anchors, Xinyan and Xinyu, are the result of a joint development project between Xinhua News Agency and robotics company UBTECH, with their visual identities designed under the direction of filmmaker Zhang Yimou.

Both robots are built to human scale and are custom-built for news applications, capable of delivering on-site news broadcasts. Their capabilities leverage Xinhua's AI-powered newsbot "Xinhua Yudian" as well as UBTECH's proprietary technologies including biomimetic skin, embodied AI hardware, emotion-driven large language models and mass production capabilities.

Director-general of Xinhua's New Media Center Qian Tong said robot anchors are intended to take on new roles in the newsroom, not to become the stars of the show, assisting journalists and editors with news presentation, multilingual content delivery and on-site interaction. UBTECH CEO Zhou Jian said the robots have established an integrated "brain-expression-control" technical pipeline that enables them to retrieve authoritative news in real time, helping reduce the risks of misinformation caused by AI hallucinations.

The product is planned for future application in more scenarios such as educational bases, urban public venues, overseas cultural exchanges and deep space exploration reporting. The 7th World Media Summit, co-hosted by Xinhua and the Beijing municipal government under the theme "Media in the Intelligent Age: From Consensus to Action," brought together nearly 500 delegates from nearly 330 media outlets, think tanks and organisations from 112 countries and regions.

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