Xinhua and UBTECH unveil Xinyan and Xinyu, bionic humanoid robot news anchors
China's state news agency Xinhua unveiled two bionic humanoid robot news anchors, Xinyan and Xinyu, on November 5 at the AI and Chinese Modernization forum that opened the seventh World Media Summit in Beijing, Singapore's 8world reported, citing the state-run People's Posts and Telecommunications News. The summit's organizers billed them as the world's first bionic humanoid robots built to read the news.
Source: 8world (Mediacorp, Singapore), citing People's Posts and Telecommunications News (Chinese)
According to the report, Xinhua co-developed the robots with Chinese humanoid maker UBTECH, and film director Zhang Yimou was chief designer of their appearance. They connect to Xinhua Yudian, Xinhua's AI agent for current-affairs news. Xinhua says the anchors pair a large AI model with a physical robot body.
Why it matters
Nearly all coverage so far traces back to Xinhua or other state-linked outlets. None has said whether the anchors will read real bulletins on air, how much of each broadcast is scripted, or what UBTECH hardware they use.
More on UBTech and humanoid robots.
Sources
- 8world (Mediacorp, Singapore), citing People's Posts and Telecommunications News (Chinese)
- Asia News Today: World Media Summit opens in Beijing, robot anchor among highlights
- The Peninsula Qatar (QNA): Qatar at the 7th World Media Summit
New to robots? Read our guide: How humanoid robots work.
Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.