Something strange is happening in the world of broadcast news.
Live announcers are slowly being replaced by virtual actors and synthesized voices. Last spring, Ananova hit the scene. She reads the news for the UK's Press Association. Shortly after Ananova began broadcasting, Sprint introduced Chase Walker, an interactive news announcer, to appear via their ION broadband Internet service. We're all familiar with Clippit, the annoying Microsoft paperclip who only heralds bad news. Last month, a new face appeared on the web in France. Eve Solal is looking for a job in TV.
And so technology advances. Yesterday, Toshiba announced a breakthrough in speech synthesis. Their new system can imitate the voice of any person and instantly converts typed text into voices with a range of intonations.
Perhaps someday we'll be loyal fans of a computer-generated newsreader. Walter Cronkite, you're out of fashion.
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