A pair of virtual Chinese news readers raised concerns about their use by the Chinese authorities for propaganda and disinformation.

Developed by Chinese news service Xinhua in collaboration with search engine company Sogou, "Qiu Hao" and "Zhang Zhao" were created using facial recognition, deep learning, 3D reconstructions, machine translation and facial expression modeling to mimic the appearance and voice of real human anchors.

Xinhua claimed the anchors, one of which speaks English and the other Mandarin, “can read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor”. Both were put to work on Xinhua's WeChat channel and were said to be intended to reduce news production costs and improve efficiency.” A Sogou manager told SixthTone that the new technology would "liberate the labour force".

However, the anchors met with skepticism from the public, with many questioning whether they seem as real as human reporters. Meantime, others commented that the anchors' voices sound stiff and have trouble with pauses. Experts warned that while the technology is impressive, it is essentially just a digital puppet that reads a script as opposed to an intelligent system.

Concerns were also epxressed about the potential misuse of the technology to spread Chinese government propaganda and misinformation.