A Creepy AI Robot Will Give One Of The Biggest Announcements Of The Year
England's BBC Channel 4 is going have an AI robot named Ameca provide the alternative Christmas message to King Charles' official royal remarks.
A dystopian humanoid cyborg is set to give us the season’s greetings this year on Channel 4. According to a report from Deadline, the AI robot, whose name is Ameca, will be delivering alternate remarks to King Charles III’s annual Royal Christmas message. The robot was developed by Engineered Arts, a developing firm in Cornwall, England.
The AI for Ameca is apparently set to deliver remarks which seek to calm the nation and the world at large, by reassuring us that 2022 was a “learning opportunity, a chance to change the way we think about the world and a reminder to help those in need whenever we can.” This sounds suspiciously like some kind of terrifying cyborg threat, especially without hearing the accompanying Apple Maps voice delivering the statement, but Channel 4 assures us the robot supports the human race and loves a good laugh when times get tough.
AI has become increasingly advanced in the past several years, as AI generators online have been built to supply our every demand, including deepfake audio and video technology, and ready-made images courtesy of advanced computation programs like the DALL-E Mini 2. Though, it must take some serious RAM to power a humanoid cyborg anchoring a speech to the nation. Ameca is reportedly capable of smiling, blinking, frowning, scrunching up her nose, and terrifying onlookers from up to 50 meters away.
Channel 4 has assured its viewers that the speech will be completely AI-generated, and untouched by human writers or editors, causing some insecure writers to wonder if their jobs are on the chopping block … we assume. The biometric bot contains millions of electronic synapses, making it one of the most advanced AI creations yet. Though AI-generated writing and art have become popular in recent culture, it still seems as though the nuances of humanity cannot be replicated.
This isn’t Channel 4’s first foray into the vast world of artificial intelligence either. Back in 2020, the annual address was delivered by a deepfake Queen Elizabeth II, performed by an actor mimicking the now-deceased monarch’s speech patterns as AI technology created a real-time video lip-syncing to the address. The previous AI stunt was met with over 200 complaints that the deepfake of the queen was disrespectful to her position, so it’s probably a smart move to leave any real-world figures out of the action this year as the nation still mourns her recent loss.
The alternative Christmas message has long been a Channel 4 staple, dating back to 1993 and including acts such as American fugitive and government whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as Eastenders’ star Danny Dyer. Perhaps by this time next year, the station will have developed an AI so advanced that it actually fools people into believing it’s human a la the T-1000 from James Cameron’s Terminator 2. One thing’s for sure, they’d better cover up Ameca’s circuit board before the announcement, because baby it’s cold outside, and a white Christmas just might short-circuit this bot into a killing spree.
