Xinhua News Agency introduced two humanoid robot presenters at a Beijing media summit, putting AI-assisted broadcasting alongside delegates’ calls for cautious use and human checks.
The unveiling took place Nov. 5 at the seventh World Media Summit. Xinhua identified the life-size presenters as Xinyan and Xinyu, developed with UBTECH Robotics for news broadcasts. The agency said director Zhang Yimou led their visual design.
Xinhua said the robots use its “Xinhua Yudian” AI current-affairs agent and UBTECH technologies. The agency presented them as the first bionic humanoid robot news anchors worldwide, an unverified designation. It did not give a date for routine newsroom use.
Qian Tong, director of Xinhua’s New Media Center, described the pair as “a new job type in the newsroom, not a new protagonist.” In a quote translated from Chinese, he said they could assist journalists and editors with news delivery, multilingual output and live interaction.
Other summit participants addressed how newsrooms should use AI. Mohammed Alyami, director general of the Union of News Agencies of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told Xinhua that the issue was how to use AI “responsibly, professionally and ethically.”
Ofiul Hasnat, editor-in-chief of Daily Finland, told Xinhua that speech-to-text tools in his newsroom can struggle with accents and uncommon names, so staff must check the results. He said media should embrace technological development “very cautiously.”
Buenos Aires Times reported that journalist Agustino Fontevecchia saw humanoid robots playing electric pianos in a hotel lobby during the summit. That account is unverified.
Xinhua said nearly 500 delegates from nearly 330 mainstream media outlets, think tanks, government departments and international organizations are attending from 112 countries and regions. The summit’s theme is “Media in the Intelligent Age: From Consensus to Action”; its agenda includes AI’s effects on global media and future communication governance. Xinhua says the World Media Summit mechanism began in 2009. The 2026 meeting is scheduled to continue through Nov. 9.
