The provincial government of Jeju recently hired the news anchor “J-na” to host her weekly program on YouTube for 600,000 won ($450) per month – the virtual persona J-na.
The female anchor created by artificial intelligence primarily presents policy updates and local news from the island, where she reads texts prepared by artificial intelligence. The program, developed and managed by a private contracting company, costs 600,000 Korean won (equivalent to $600 in Singapore dollars) monthly, as stated by the island province.
According to an official in Jeju:
“Hiring human news presenters incurs high costs, so we sought an alternative and chose J-na.”
The name J-na is derived from the merging of the initial letters of the words “Jeju,” “News,” and “Artificial Intelligence.”
In the broadcast paragraph on March 8 within the “Weekly Jeju” program on the province’s official channel on YouTube and its website, J-na appeared wearing a blue dress, delicately swaying from side to side while reading the news in an attempt to appear natural.
In a corner of the screen, a sign language expert, a real human, provided immediate translation for everything J-na was talking about.
This is not the first time an AI news presenter has been introduced to the public in Korea.
On November 6, 2020, MBN became the first local broadcast channel to unveil an artificial news presenter, inspired by the human news presenter Kim Jo-ha. Since then, the channel started airing daily programs featuring the artificial intelligence version of the presenter.
Similarly, at the beginning of last year, the broadcasting station SBS adopted a virtual personality supported by artificial intelligence named Zai-In to present a segment in its program about current affairs titled “Wide Morning Part 3”. Zai-In was created by the artificial intelligence company BS9 and is also a member of the virtual girl group Eternity.
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of its founding in September 2023, the news channel YTN introduced the AI news presenters Y-Go and Y-On, representing a man and a woman respectively. The artificial intelligence developer ESTsoft created the two AI news presenters by merging the faces of YTN employees. Korea Herald/Asia News Network
