The virtual speaker Fedha was created using artificial intelligence. She reads the news for Kuwait News.
In any case, she is a fake blonde: Fedha, the female figure in a white T-shirt, who can already be seen in a video on Twitter, is to read the online news of a Kuwaiti media company in the future. She is “the first presenter in Kuwait” to work with artificial intelligence, she said. Although she herself is a creature of artificial intelligence.
Kuwait News, part of the English-language newspaper Kuwait Times, is currently testing the potential of the technology. This is how you want to deliver “new and innovative content,” said Deputy Editor-in-Chief Abdullah Boftain of the AFP news agency. According to him, Fedha could speak with a Kuwaiti accent and present a news program in the future. Fedha is an old and popular Kuwaiti given name that refers to the metal silver, Boftain said. “We always think of robots as silver and metal, so we combined the two.”
It’s not the first time AI has been used in media. The Chinese news agency Xinhua introduced the first two artificial news anchors in 2018. They should report “tirelessly” from across China, especially for social media. However, the voice still sounded very artificial. In the coming years, AI will probably also pose major challenges for media consumers and the media industry in this country.
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