In what seemed like a plot straight from a sci-fi movie, a robot has reportedly written an article for a Guangzhou-based tabloid paper.
According to China Daily, a robot named Xiao Nan wrote a 300-word article about the Spring Festival travel rush for the Southern Metropolis Daily.
The robot took only "a second" to complete the write-up. It was also able to finish longer articles, per Wan Xiaojun, a professor at Peking University, who headed the team studying intelligent robots.
"When compared with the staff reporters, Xiao Nan has a stronger data analysis capacity and is quicker at writing stories," Wan said. "But it does not mean intelligent robots will soon be able to completely replace reporters."
One of the limitations of robots such as Xiao Nan is their inability to handle face-to-face interviews and make follow-up questions. They are also not equipped to choose story angles, noted Wan.
"But robots will be able to act as a supplement, helping newspapers and related media, as well as editors and reporters," he said.
Wan is currently working with the Southern Metropolis Daily to create a laboratory that will further study such robots.
Media robots are not quite as common as service robots, which have been present in many restaurants in and outside China.
Last year, Pizza Hut used SoftBank's humanoid robot named Pepper to serve customers in Japan. The order-taking robot adopted artificial intelligence to interact with people, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, global turnover of service robots, which include the likes of Pepper, is predicted to balloon to $46 billion throughout 2019, from $7 billion in 2015.
In the manufacturing sector, meanwhile, several companies have long started replacing human workers with such smart machines as they try to grapple with the rising manpower costs.
Watch Pepper interact with humans in the video below.