AI-created newsreaders?

In the four weeks since Venezuela’s disputed election, local journalists have come up with a distinctly 21st-century tactic to avoid being arrested for reporting on 21st-century socialism: using artificial intelligence avatars to report all the news Maduro’s regime deems unfit to print.

In daily broadcasts, the AI-created newsreaders have been telling the world about the president’s post-election crackdown on opponents, activists and the media, without putting the reporters behind the stories at risk.

Carlos Eduardo Huertas, the director of Connectas, the Colombia-based journalism platform coordinating the initiative, said far from being a gimmick, the use of AI was a response to “the persecution and the growing repression that our colleagues are suffering in Venezuela, where the uncertainty over the safety of doing their job … grows by the minute”.