THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Xinhua unveiled the robot anchors Xinyu and Xinyan on November 5 at the seventh World Media Summit in Beijing and calls them the world's first bionic humanoid news anchors.
  • UBTECH supplied the bionic skin, embodied-intelligence hardware, operating system, emotion model and manufacturing; film director Zhang Yimou is credited as chief image designer.
  • The anchors draw on Xinhua Yudian, the agency's AI current-affairs agent, which Xinhua and UBTECH say limits the risk of generative AI errors.

China's Xinhua News Agency presented two humanoid robot news anchors, named Xinyu and Xinyan, on November 5 at a forum on artificial intelligence and Chinese modernization held during the seventh World Media Summit in Beijing. Xinhua describes them as the world's first bionic humanoid robot news anchors; the agency's reports offer no independent comparison to support that claim. According to Unite.AI, one of the robots read the opening news on stage.

Who built what

The anchors were developed jointly by Xinhua and the Shenzhen robotics company UBTECH. Xinhua's Chinese-language report says UBTECH provided the full technology stack: bionic skin, embodied-intelligence hardware, the operating system, an emotion-oriented large model and the manufacturing of the complete robots. Unite.AI reports that the robots have life-size human proportions and were customized for news settings. Film director Zhang Yimou is credited as chief image designer, leading the visual design of the robots.

On the content side, the anchors are connected to Xinhua Yudian, which Xinhua presents as its AI agent for current-affairs information. UBTECH founder, chairman and chief executive Zhou Jian said the robots follow a chain linking a "brain", expression and motion control, and that retrieving reviewed information in real time helps avoid the risk of hallucinations typical of generative AI. That safeguard is described by the developers and has not been independently assessed.

Role in the newsroom

Qian Tong, director of Xinhua's New Media Center, said the robots are a new kind of newsroom role rather than its new protagonists, with reporters and editors remaining in charge. In Xinhua's account, the machines are meant to help with presenting news, producing output in several languages and live interaction. Zhou listed possible future uses including research bases, city reception venues, cultural exchanges abroad and even deep-space reporting; none of these has been demonstrated yet.

Xinhua has experimented with synthetic presenters before, notably on-screen AI anchors developed with Sogou in 2018. The new project moves the idea from video into physical robots. Key details remain undisclosed, including how many units exist, how much of the delivery is generated autonomously, and when the anchors will appear in regular broadcasts.