Hangzhou TV revolutionizes news with AI anchors, merging realism with innovation.
Hangzhou TV has introduced two AI anchors, Xiao Yu, and Xiao Yu, developed by Hangzhou Culture, Radio, TV, Group, and Film Group’s short video AI production workshop. These digital hosts, modeled after real anchors Yu Chen and Qi Yu, showcase remarkably realistic expressions, voices, and movements, allowing their human counterparts to enjoy the holiday season. This innovation marks the first full-digital news program featuring AI anchors throughout its broadcast during the Spring Festival.
The development of these AI anchors leverages NeRF technology and multimodal large-scale pre-training techniques, achieving highly detailed customization based on program needs. These digital personas exhibit human-like emotions, appearances, and body movements, offering a solution to lengthy production cycles and the need for physical presence.
Launched in July 2023, the workshop claims to be the nation’s first complete AI-driven short video production line “from strategy to distribution.” Thanks to advanced video content understanding and semantic alignment technologies, it can generate audio from scripts under 500 words in 30 seconds, produce videos with hyper-realistic digital humans, and manage media resources efficiently.
With over 20 digital anchors and 500+ minutes of video content, the workshop supports more than ten programs, including China’s first AI-generated TV show. It also extends its services to non-media sectors, showcasing the versatility of AI in content creation. Notably, during the Hangzhou Asian Games, AI was extensively used to generate content, brand integration, and broadcast sports events, demonstrating the broad potential of AI in enhancing media production and dissemination.