ByteDance AI is a tech leader widely recognized in the field of AI. It is currently valued at more than 75 billion dollars. The main reason for the success of the company is because of its efficient use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to efficiently deliver customized feeds for its users. Recently ByteDance introduced the world’s first multilingual and multimodal AI newsagent ‘Xiaomingbot’.
With the advance in technology, automatic news reporting has become easier than ever before. Xiaomingbot mostly finds application in a minor sports league, during these events the data will already be available, and sending Xiaomingbot in place of human newsreader will be more cost-efficient. The current robots which exit as automatic news reporter mainly focus on text generation but the new robot report by ByteDance AI is quite different from this. They are more versatile and user friendly compared to the current robots. Not only does Xiaomingbot generate news from the existing input data but it also delivers news multiple languages with lifelike animation of a typical TV anchor. The news will be delivered mainly in the field of sports and finance. The researchers from both the ByteDance AL lab and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have worked together to introduce this multilingual and multimodal AI newsreader.
The four components that Xiaomingbot possesses are a news generator, a news translator, a cross-lingual newsreader, and an animal avatar. The news is written using a template called table2text technology. There are module filters which summarize the text generated, a transformer acts as a translation module to translate the abstract. A text to speech module gives Xiaomingbot ability to read in multiple languages.
Another point to note is that it is the first robot reporter who is capable of not only speaking but can also write and is capable of dynamic expression. The animated newsreader with lip motion, facial expression, and realistic clothing helps the users to connect better with the robot. After the robot’s introduction, it has gained huge popularity in social media. Currently, it gained 150,000 followers and has also delivered about 600,000 news articles.
