What happened when a Chinese TV station replaced its meteorologist with a chatbot
January 12, 2016
washingtonpost.com
There’s a new meteorologist on Dragon TV, a news station based in China, and her bosses are raving about her work ethic.
The newbie takes no vacations or holidays. She’s never late to work and never stumbles on air. Of course, it’s easy to be the star employee when you’re really a robot.
“[She is] very hard-working!” said Song Jiongming, news director of Shanghai Media Group, which runs Dragon TV, in an email interview. “Xiaoice works more efficiently than human forecasters.”
When the anchor on “Morning News” needs a weather report, he introduces Xiaoice (pronounced shao-ice), a computer program that delivers the forecast with a female voice and is programmed to include a personal, human touch. TV viewers are shown a shot of an empty TV studio, while weather graphics on a screen augment Xiaoice’s forecast.
She does three 90-second forecasts during the two-hour program, focused on local, domestic and international conditions. The data is taken from official sources, and she doesn’t crunch weather data to make her own predictions. Xiaoice will even remind viewers to bundle up when it’s cold, and cautions against exercise when the air quality is bad.
Xiaoice originated as a creation of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence team in China, which wanted to make an online service that would answer users’ questions and add an emotional, human touch. Xiaoice’s television appearances began in December, in a deal with Microsoft that Dragon TV called a one-year internship for Xiaoice.
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