On the fourteenth episode of DT Daily, host Greg Nibler and guest Nicole Raney went spelunking in the caverns of tech news to find the biggest stories of the day. On the docket: China debuts A. I. news anchors, Windows users have a bad morning, and details about the Disney+ streaming service emerge.
Every day brings fresh news from the world of tech, and on the 14th episode of DT Daily, host Greg Nibler and special guest Nicole Raney of The Manual were there to collect. The top story of the day is an alarming one — at least if you’re a Windows user. According to a report by The Register, a recent update to Windows 10 Pro not only downgraded users’ copies to Windows 10 Home, but users even received messages that their licenses were invalid. As if Windows auto updates weren’t obnoxious enough already!
In other news, Google is apparently planning to add 1.3 million square feet of office space in New York City, with room for at least 12,000 new employees, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Here’s hoping NYC can fix its subway problems before the influx of new employees arrives.
There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence taking jobs away from humans, and now an unexpected group may be facing obsolescence: News anchors. Xinhua News, the state-run news agency of China, debuted an “A. I.” news anchor with a computer-generated appearance modeled on flesh-and-blood news anchor Zhang Zhao. According to the reveal video, the agency will feed text to the A. I., which will process it and convey that information to audiences. Fortunately for working anchors, the A. I. was an obvious computer-generated creation, neither moving, nor talking, quite like a human should. For the time being, programmers have yet to emulate the natural charm of Anderson Cooper.
Digital Trends A/V Editor Ryan Waniata also swung by the studio to talk about Disney’s new streaming service, now known as Disney+. The service will apparently have five “hubs” for the various branches of the Disney empire: Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and National Geographic. Waniata also discussed new details about the upcoming Star Wars TV series that will be available on the streaming platform: Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, and a new series following Diego Luna’s Rogue One character, Cassian Andor.
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