
Speaking to Newslaundry, BIG TVâs CEO, Ajay Reddy Konda, said the initial investment made for the AI development platform was âminisculeâ compared to âwhat his company pays a human anchorâ .
âA good human anchor would cost [me] â¹70,000-â¹80,000 per month, whereas an AI anchor costs around â¹7,000-â¹8,000 per monthâ, he said. BIG TV introduced Maya, Indiaâs first Telugu AI news anchor, in July 2023.
Paying an upfront fee for developing an AI avatar and then paying monthly subscription charges for operating the avatar makes more âfinancial sense for news organizationsâ, Rishab Sharma, co-founder of Personate, a tech outfit, told Newslaundry. Sharma’s company played a key role in developing AI anchors for India Today and DD Kisan.
However, despite the monetary advantages AI anchors may bring for news outlets, they are not without problems.
AI-generated content âunreliableâ
The news channels, Sharmaâs company developed AI anchors for, do not rely on computer-generated news presenters and press human intervention into service at almost all levels. The reason: AIâgenereated content isnât always reliable.
âAI anchors hallucinate a lot,â Sharma admits, referring to instances entailing AI âcooking upâ details of events that never occurred.
Writers and editors in the newsrooms draft a script and upload it on an AI platform to create an audio which is then lip-synced with the AI anchor, he said.
Most news outlets follow a similar set of steps for programmes involving AI presenters.
âWe usually do a five-minute bulletin [with our AI news anchor], and it takes around two to three hours for the preparation, including manually writing and editing the scriptâ, BIG TVâs Konda explained.
To some, the need for human oversight at each step makes the purpose of AI news anchors redundant.
âIf humans are writing scripts and feeding them into an AI anchor, then whatâs the point?â argued Nivash Jeevanandama, a senior researcher at IndiaAI â a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology initiative on artificial intelligence. âItâs just an artificial doll reading out pre-written contentâ, he said, referring to AI news anchors.
Even in newsrooms where AI anchors do collate and generate material for news bulletins and other videos, the content is reviewed by a team of editors.
The AI framework Odisha TVâs Lisa employs drafts scripts for bulletins based on real-time updates making production âfaster and more efficient”, however, all details are âverified and fact-checkedâ, said Litisha Mangat Panda, a senior business associate at the Odia channel. To ensure no misleading information is put out, especially around sensitive issues, Panda said, âEditors double-check every AI-generated update before it goes on airâ.
Even if concerns about the accuracy of the content they generate are put aside, AI news anchors are still far from perfect.
BIG TVâs Konda concedes that bulletins hosted by anchors are âvery monotonousâ and lack the âemotional nuancesâ a human presenter brings to the screen.
Issues about AI anchors presenting news also go beyond the confines of the newsrooms.
âAI news anchors reflect gender biasâ
A striking number of AI news presenters in India are female.
For instance, of the six AI news presenters introduced by the India Today group, five are females. Of the five, Naina, who delivers news in Bhojpuri, is also curiously referred to as âBhojpuri Bhabhi (sister-in-law)â by the group in news bulletins.