The idea of a virtual anchor was pioneered >10 years ago by a group at the Northwestern CS Department including Kris Hammond. The project was called "News at Seven." This video shows the later iterations of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3MRkFYM9Q4
IIRC the early version around 2005 or 2006 used the Half Life 2 engine, so you would have Alyx Vance reading the news with a gun strapped to her belt. At the time I remember thinking that this would be great when the customization options were enabled, as you could just get the news you want instead of the stuff you don't care about that takes up most newscasts today, as well as preferred visual and voice skins to handle the narration.
As someone who worked in broadcast news, I can say that most anchors do nothing more than reading from a script so this type of task is perfectly suited to replacement by a bot or AI or whatever you want to call it. Where it fails is the "banter" format that many U.S. local newscasts use and the ad hoc interviews that local and national anchors conduct with reporters in the field.
IIRC the early version around 2005 or 2006 used the Half Life 2 engine, so you would have Alyx Vance reading the news with a gun strapped to her belt. At the time I remember thinking that this would be great when the customization options were enabled, as you could just get the news you want instead of the stuff you don't care about that takes up most newscasts today, as well as preferred visual and voice skins to handle the narration.
As someone who worked in broadcast news, I can say that most anchors do nothing more than reading from a script so this type of task is perfectly suited to replacement by a bot or AI or whatever you want to call it. Where it fails is the "banter" format that many U.S. local newscasts use and the ad hoc interviews that local and national anchors conduct with reporters in the field.