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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Dan Milmo and Amy Hawkins

How China is using AI news anchors to deliver its propaganda

Screengrab from a video from Chinese state-backed group called Storm-1376 showing an AI-generated newsreader.
Screengrab from a video from Chinese state-backed group called Storm-1376 showing an AI-generated newsreader. Photograph: Storm-1376

The news presenter has a deeply uncanny air as he delivers a partisan and pejorative message in Mandarin: Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as limp spinach, her period in office beset by economic under performance, social problems and protests.

“Water spinach looks at water spinach. Turns out that water spinach isn’t just a name,” says the presenter, in an extended metaphor about Tsai being “Hollow Tsai” – a pun related to the Mandarin word for water spinach.

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