Tech startup to launch AI newsroom to rival human networks

This idea is currently in the works by a tech startup called Channel 1 News, which will provide a 30-minute weekly show through a FAST channel made entirely from artificial intelligence. The startup is founded by producer and director Scott Zabielski, most famously known for Tosh.0 and The Jim Jefferies Show, and tech entrepreneur Adam Mosam. The end goal is to produce 500 to 1,000 daily news segments, according to Hollywood Reporter.

The first weekly show will reportedly be available for streaming on video platforms as early as this year, but the duo says there are still kinks that need to be worked out when it comes to making the AI anchors and correspondents look identical to real-life human beings.

"The elephant in the room is this still looks like you're watching a video game character talk. And does anybody really want to watch a video game character deliver the news to them? I don't think so," Zabielski told the outlet.

"I think if the technology was stuck here, this would be a really hard sell. So part of what we're doing is, like any technology, you can't wait until it's perfect to start on day one. So we're obviously getting ahead of this and we're looking down the road at 12 months from now, 18 months from now, three years from now. It is going to get to a point where you absolutely will not be able to tell the difference between watching AI and watching a human being, but we also understand that there's going to be a pathway from here to there," he explained.

The reason for this new venture, according to Zabielski, is to personalize the media landscape, something that he says is lacking in the industry.

"Basically, these days, everything has sort of become personalization, whether it's Spotify learning what you want to hear and recommending songs that maybe you didn’t know about but that you’d be interested in, or TikTok, or any of these personalized algorithms," Zabielski said. "That’s something we don’t really see in news yet."

Not only will Channel 1 feature AI anchors and correspondents, the company also plans to use artificial intelligence to re-create events that cameras failed to capture, according to Hollywood Reporter.

Adam Mosam explains that, "The closest analogy I could give is when you talk about a trial that was covered with there's no cameras allowed and you'll see the courtroom sketch. That's kind of the best that the news has been able to do and we haven't improved on that in decades."

"What we're looking to do potentially is to add visuals where we would clearly denote this is generated imagery. So we're not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes to say like, 'Our cameras were inside the Oval Office when this meeting happened," he explained.

Channel 1 will develop its scripts using large language models (LLMs), and will get its news from "reliable sources" that will be reviewed by editors for accuracy.

“We're very aware of the LLM hallucination, hallucinations and things like that," Mosam said. "We're staying away from that. It's established data sources that are really trying to add a new interface on the news."

"Imagine watching CNBC, except what you're looking at is analysis of stocks that are in your portfolio, or industries that you're already watching, or if you're watching sports, it can go more in depth on the teams that you love, as opposed to waiting for the parts of the content that you're really interested in," said Mosam.

Mosam explained that the goal of Channel 1 is to "sort of bring people together because they feel like you're talking to them with their set of facts, opinions and demographics," adding that the newsroom will hold "things closer to the middle."