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It’s been almost 40 years since Max Headroom, the fictional computer-generated news anchor, first appeared on the scene. Max made big waves at the time, with some pundits predicting the eventual end of real people anchoring newscasts. That talk quickly faded when it became obvious that animated newscasters were far too raw to be compelling.
Today, artificial intelligence has become so sophisticated and is developing so quickly, that we are far beyond anything the creators of Max Headroom could conceive. Our technologically driven world means that the future is now. If you can imagine it, it can eventually be done.
Forget ChatGPT. That is only a crude first step. The real promises of AI in television, especially television news, are at the beginning of a very long runway that will offer both risk and reward.
Before you think this stuff is fantasy, know that experts are already using AI to manipulate video and voices of real anchors with the goal of eventually creating computer-generated characters with human personas. We must assume that at some point fully developed AI-generated newscasts will become a reality.
The questions you and I must ask today are not technical; they are ethical. How should the technology be used? How should it not be used? As AI rolls out, those conundrums will be among the formidable issues of their time.
What we know for sure is that there will be a further divide