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A local newspaper in Kauai, Hawaii called The Garden Island is using AI to power fake newscasters, a former journalist for the publication reports for Wired.
As human journalist and former Island employee Guthrie Scrimgeour writes, the Hawaiian newspaper recently became the first paper in the country to adopt AI-generated news anchors from an Israeli AI company called Caledo.
The Island'sCaledo-provided humanoid AI personas — one of the AI-generated characters is a man named "James," while the other is a woman named "Rose" — star in web and social media-shared videos modeled to resemble a real newscast that "reports" on the paper's latest articles. Their broadcast is titled TGI Today.
The personas are pretty unnerving. Their movements are inhuman, and every story is delivered in the same exact tone. James and Rose discuss a suicide prevention effort on the island, for instance, with the same timbre as they do Labor Day breakfast specials.
As far as efforts to revitalize local news go, in other words, this is definitely in contention for most depressing. And as Scrimgeour points out, the comments section on Instagram seems to agree.
"This is so grim," wrote one viewer. "This ain't that," added another. "Keep journalism local."
Choices, Choices
Per the report, the Island's investment in Caledo's tech came after the paper's parent company was purchased by the Carpenter Media Group, which owns dozens of local papers across the country.
Caledo's founders, a married couple named Dina and Moti Shatner, told Wired that their tech offers a more "engaging" way to interact with news.
"Just watching someone read an article is boring," said Dina Shatner, according to Wired. "But watching people talking about a subject — this is engaging."
Is it? Regardless, according to the report, the Shatners claim that Carpenter is planning on rolling more Jameses and Roses out to its many other papers — a goal that raises important questions about where owners of local outlets are choosing to invest their cash (Carpenter declined to comment.)
After all, Caledo's weirdo anchors aren't free; per Wired, the company's founders wouldn't say how much the service costs for publishers, but argue that new advertising revenue it rakes in should balance out the price.
Whether that's ultimately the case remains unclear. But these videos are far from "engaging," and we're sure that human interns in front of Zoom backgrounds could create something with way more actual value to news consumers (while adding an entry-level role to their résumé to boot.)
But instead of investing in local human journalists, the Island is simply paying to show its readers fake ones.
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