University project automates newscasts

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 October 2006 at 16:00
Tags: Journalism, Mashups

Who needs human newsreaders when you’ve got videogame characters to front the evening bulletin? A project at Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory is developing on a fully-automated video newscast and it does just that.

The project, reported by the television blog Lost Remote, combines resources available online to create a fully-automated newscast.

The News at Seven finds news stories on the web and then presents them visually using a videogame character Alyx Vance (from the first-person shooter Halo 2, obviously) and text-to-speech software to create a virtual newsreader. It also presents relevant images in the background and reads out bloggers’ commentary on current stories.

There are clearly some kinks left to work out. At one point, the videogame character-turned-presenter reverts to form, whips out her sidearm and dispatches a baddie off-camera.

Ananova would never do that.

While Geraldo Rivera famously packed heat while reporting from Afghanistan for Fox News, the introduction of actually discharging handguns to commit gratuitous acts of violence in the studio may put off some viewers.

Don’t believe the last paragraph? The video is available for download (37Mb .wmv) from the researchers’ site.

Tags: Journalism, Mashups