Fedha— AI generated news presenter. Photo: Kuwait News
Kuwait: A Kuwaiti news outlet has unveiled the country’s first virtual news presenter created using artificial intelligence.
Its launch is currently part of a testing phase aimed at creating new content.
Kuwait News uploaded a 13-second video clip of ‘Fedha’ – an AI-generated blonde-haired female news reader who sported a black jacket and white T-shirt as she introduced herself.
“I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News. What kind of news do you prefer?,” she said in Arabic.
“Let’s hear your opinions,” she added.
Fedha is a popular old Kuwaiti name that refers to silver, the metal.
Kuwait isn’t the first country to unveil an AI-produced news anchor: In 2018, China’s state news agency unveiled its own virtual newsreader wearing a sharp suit and somewhat robotic voice.
London: The BBC on Saturday is dealing with a deepening row as it emerged that it decided not to broadcast an episode narrated by world-famous conservationist Sir David Attenborough for a new wildlife series over fears of a right-wing backlash, amid an ongoing controversy over affecting its sports programming involving football legend Gary Lineker.
Several of the broadcaster’s regular sports presenters have stepped back in solidarity with former England captain and TV pundit Lineker after he was suspended over a controversial tweet related to the government’s migration policy.
It has now been forced to strongly deny a report in ‘The Guardian’ newspaper that said a sixth episode of the Attenborough-narrated Wild Isles’ series will not be broadcast over political concerns.
While the newspaper claims that senior sources at the BBC have said that the decision not to show the sixth episode was made to fend off potential criticism from the political right, the BBC claims it was never intended for broadcast in the first place.
“This is totally inaccurate, there is no sixth episode’. Wild Isles’ is and always was a five-part series and does not shy away from environmental content,” the BBC statement said.
“We have acquired a separate film for iPlayer [online service] from the RSPB [Royal Society for the Protection of Birds] and WWF [World Wide Fund for Nature] and Silverback Films about people working to preserve and restore the biodiversity of the British Isles,” it said.
The documentary series was part-funded by nature charities the WWF and RSPB and all the episodes are narrated by 96-year-old Attenborough.
The newspaper claims some insiders at the BBC fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.
The so-called sixth episode is understood to be a stark look at the losses of nature in the UK and what has caused the decline. It is also understood to include some examples of rewilding, a concept that has been controversial in some right-wing circles.
Laura Howard, who produced the programme and used to work at the BBC’s Natural History Unit, told the ‘Guardian’: “I think the facts speak for themselves. You know, we’ve worked really closely with the RSPB in particular who are able to fact-check all of our scripts and provide us with detailed scientific data and information about the loss of wildlife in this country.
“And it is undeniable, we are incredibly nature-depleted. And I don’t think that that is political, I think it’s just facts.”
The controversy comes as the corporation apologised for its “limited sports programming” this weekend and said it is “working hard to resolve the situation” after several of its regular presenters went off air.
In a post on Tuesday on his Twitter account which has 8.7 million followers, 62-year-old Lineker one of England’s greatest soccer players and now among the UK’s most influential media figures compared lawmakers’ language about migrants to that used in Nazi Germany.
The BBC, which operates through a taxpayer-funded licence fee, considers Lineker posting such views on social media as a breach of its impartiality guidelines.
The network said it held discussions with Lineker over his involvement in Match of the Day’, which is broadcast on Saturday nights and shows highlights of English Premier League games that day.
“The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting ‘Match of the Day’, until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” the broadcaster said.
“We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies,” it added.
Mumbai: It’s a proud moment for India as Deepika Padukone has been announced as a presenter at the Oscars 2023.
On Thursday night, Deepika took to Instagram and shared a post with the names of all the presenters. The list also includes Dwayne Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Riz Ahmed, Emily Blunt, Glenn Close, Troy Kotsur, Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Samuel L. Jackson, Melissa McCarthy, Zoe Saldana, Donnie Yen, Jonathan Majors and Questlove.
Sharing the post, the actress simply wrote, “#oscars#oscars95.”
In no time, netizens flooded Deepika’s comment section with congratulatory wishes.
“Can’t wait to watch you Deepu,” actress Neha Dhupia commented.
Deepika’s husband Ranveer dropped clapping emojis in the comment section.
The 95th Academy Awards will be held on March 12 (March 13 in India) at Los Angeles’ Dolly Theatre. It’s a special year for India at the Oscars. This time around, not just one, but three significant Indian movies are competing for the coveted Oscars Awards 2023 nominations.
RRR is on the shortlist for Best Original Song for the dance song Naatu Naatu, which won the Golden Globe Award in the same category earlier this year.
Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film and Guneet Monga’s The Elephant Whisperers for Best Documentary Short.
France’s most-watched news channel, the 24-hour BFMTV, has suspended one of its longest-serving presenters and launched an internal investigation into news packages linked to an Israeli disinformation unit calling itself “Team Jorge”.
Rachid M’Barki, an anchor at BFMTV since its launch in 2005, is on leave and at the centre of the inquiry into multiple stories broadcast on his show, Le journal de la nuit.
He was suspended last month, after a member of Team Jorge suggested to undercover reporters that the group was secretly behind a BFMTV news report about the Monaco yachting industry.
The report, broadcast last year, suggested sanctions imposed against Russian oligarchs were damaging the yachting industry in the Mediterranean principality.
When a reporter approached BFMTV to ask questions about the integrity of that package and several others broadcast by the channel, M’Barki was suspended.
The channels said in a statement that the packages did not go through the usual editorial validation procedures.
Team Jorge sells hacking and disinformation services to political and corporate clients who want to conduct covert influence-peddling campaigns. The team was exposed by the Guardian and an international consortium of reporters led by the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories.
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The Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay.The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”
The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.
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The leader of the unit, Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative who uses the alias “Jorge”, was filmed boasting about his ability to manipulate the media to spread propaganda, by undercover reporters posing as potential clients.
In one secretly filmed meeting, Hanan told the reporters he was able to have stories broadcast in France and then played a video clip.
One of the undercover reporters – Frédéric Métézeau, a Middle East correspondent at Radio France – recognised the clip as a report by M’Barki broadcast on BFMTV and approached the channel about the integrity of the package last month.
Alarm about the broadcasts escalated rapidly, leading to an internal investigation, and on 11 January M’Barki was taken off air and put on leave.
It is not clear whether Team Jorge was behind the BFMTV news package and, if so, how they planted the stories and on behalf of whom. The news website Politico, which first reported on the internal investigation at BFMTV, said a dozen suspicious broadcast packages were now under investigation.
Tal Hanan, the leader of Team Jorge, a hacking and disinformation unit. Photograph: Haaretz/The Marker/Radio France
Do you have information about Tal Hanan or ‘Team Jorge’? For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.
BFMTV confirmed the investigation in a statement on 2 February, saying: “An internal investigation has been ongoing at BFMTV for two weeks after the discovery of content broadcast on our programme, Le journal de la nuit, outside the usual validation channels. The journalist in charge of Journal de la nuit has been suspended since the opening of this investigation.”
Marc-Olivier Fogiel, the chief executive of BFMTV, told the Forbidden Stories consortium: “At this stage, we remain cautious. But the fact remains that we are victims.”
In a statement, BFMTV’s society of journalists (SDJ), which seeks to defend the integrity of reporting, said it had “become aware of suspicions of interference concerning a journalist from our channel”. The statement said if the details reported were correct, “they are serious and reprehensible”, and the SDJ added that it hoped the internal investigation would get to the bottom of how the packages came to be broadcast.
In a comment to Politico, M’Barki denied any intentional misconduct. He said: “They were all real and verified. I do my job … I’m not ruling anything out, maybe I was tricked, I didn’t feel like I was or that I was participating in an operation of I don’t know what or I wouldn’t have done it.”
Tal Hanan, the head of Team Jorge, did not respond to detailed questions about the unit’s activities and methods but said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
