By Dipankar Mukherjee
It’s 2025. The Carson Entertainment Group is inviting bids from major television networks to own the AI-Likeness of the legendary talk show host, Johnny Carson.
The winning bid is expected to run into a couple of billion dollars. It would give the network rights to create & own the world’s first AI Talk Show host, mimicking Carson’s appearance, behavioural traits and signature comedic style.
Johnny’s AI resemblance, powered by Meta, would interact with guests in real-time and do all the research and scripting for the show on its own. It would spontaneously come up with questions, responses, and even jokes while interviewing the guests. And everything would be delivered with Carson’s unmistakable flair and comic timing.
The seeds of this landmark event were sown in 2023, with a worldwide wave of media corporations launching their AI Newsreader bots and Meta commissioning AI personas of Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and Tom Brady.
AI Newsreaders Sana (India Today), Soundarya (PowerTV), AI Kaur (CNBC TV18), and Lisa (OdishaTV) were amongst the first to emerge out of India. Indonesian network tvOne introduced three virtual presenters: Nadira, Sasya, and Bhoomi. Malaysian network Astro Awani rolled out Joon & Monica. Taiwan’s FTV News unveiled an AI Weather Presenter, while Kuwait launched Fedha.
These AI Newsreaders were original characters, not modelled by any real news presenter. In contrast, the world’s first AI news anchor, developed in 2018 by China’s Xinhua, resembled their popular newsreader, Zhang Zhao.
Irrespective, the only intent for each of these AI bots was to tirelessly & accurately deliver a continuous stream of news content sans any emotional core. They could speak in multiple languages with perfect diction, looked like runway models, and always had a pleasant demeanour. The networks used them as talking points for over a year, making them a part of their acquisition & engagement strategy.
But beyond the initial novelty of the photorealism, there was little these AI Newsreaders had to offer. They sounded robotic, with zero to very little emotive quality in their voices. Plus, they largely delivered lengthy monologues without any conversation with guests or co-anchors. It was almost as if Siri or Alexa were reading an RSS newsfeed.
And then, in 2024, everything changed. The elections in India and in the United States that year saw record viewership, and the broadcasters were ready with the next breed of more powerful AI Newsreaders.
This was a pivotal year for AI technology and irrevocably changed newsroom storytelling. From just being plastic faces with droning voices merely reading the news, the new versions with varied expressions, intonations & pauses were now presenting the news.
Modelled after the speech patterns, questioning style and body language of renowned TV Newsanchors, these new AI presenters were now a step closer to replacing the need for their human counterparts. At the backend, the AI workflows were able to ingest vast tracts of real-time data, instantaneously correlate with historical content, accurately source relevant archival footage, and then auto-generate a complete script along with the required intercuts for the AI presenter. All the human editors had to do was approve and then hit a button for it to go live.
The months spanning pre-election debates, exit polls, and then ballot counting saw AI News Hosts operating uninterrupted 24×7. Audiences were captivated by watching the first-ever live interview between an AI bot and a human political candidate. Some clips from that broadcast featuring incisive cross-questioning by the AI bot went viral on social media.
In 2024, the first few independent digital news startups cropped up, with 100% AI-driven news channels on YouTube. The traditional editorial team was replaced by a single AI model, synced to syndicated wire services and to social media. They launched with a complete team of AI News Hosts, including some subject matter specialists for Finance, Military, Politics and Sports.
In weeks and months, it became normal to watch an AI News Anchor in conversation with an AI Sports expert and then interview a human soccer player together. To no one’s surprise, Weather News became 100% AI-driven. But the real disruption came in the Financial Market news genre, with AI news anchors emerging as the clear audience preference.
By the end of 2024, Nielsen audience surveys showed an unprecedented trust score for AI News Anchors, with some of them having become legitimate social media celebrities wearing virtual clothes and accessories sponsored by leading fashion brands.
As AI continues to blur the lines, one can’t help but wonder: what’s next in this journey? How will we navigate between innovation and authenticity? Will we yearn for genuine human connect?
Only time will tell. But one thing’s for sure: newsroom storytelling is never going back to how it was.
(The author is Dipankar Mukherjee, Chief Innovation Officer, Nihilent Limited, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
