An Investigation of Viewer Acceptance Variations for AI News Anchors with Different Levels of Appearance Fidelity

As the latest wave of technological and industrial revolutions advances, artificial intelligence is increasingly being integrated into various sectors, including journalism, driving the intelligent transformation of traditional media. This study focuses on the emerging phenomenon of AI-powered news anchors, exploring the key design factors that influence traditional news consumers' acceptance of AI news anchors. Using an experimental approach, this study compares viewers' perceptual acceptance of AI news anchors across different levels of appearance fidelity. The experimental stimuli included three sets of news videos, each featuring a human anchor, a humanoid AI anchor, and a non-humanoid AI anchor, all delivering the same news script. The results indicate that viewers can clearly distinguish between human and AI anchors. In terms of perceived usefulness, ease of use, and satisfaction, human anchors were generally rated higher than AI anchors. However, in viewing intent, non-humanoid AI anchors were significantly preferred over both human and humanoid AI anchors. Notably, no significant statistical differences were observed between humanoid and non-humanoid AI anchors regarding perceived ease of use and satisfaction. These findings provide valuable insights for the design of AI news anchors and offer theoretical and practical implications for the application of AI technology in the field of journalism.