As if life in wartime Ukraine wasn’t unreal enough, the foreign ministry this week introduced an AI-generated “spokesperson” that will be used to make official statements on its behalf.
“Victoria Shi,” will appear to be dressed in a dark suit and read scripts provided by humans, made her debut on social media by introducing itself.
“I am a digital person, that means the text that you hear was generated by artificial intelligence,” the bot said in its initial video, posted Wednesday. “With my appointment, we are taking a step into the future.”
“It’s only the visual part that the AI helps us to generate,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, told The Guardian. The text that the bot reads is created by the agency.
He added the feat is a “technological leap that no diplomatic service in the world has yet made,” which was created to save the time and resources of its diplomats.
Shi is modeled after singer Rosalie Nombre, a former contestant on Ukraine’s version of the reality show “The Bachelor.”
It’s first name is based on the word “victory” and its last on the Ukrainian phrase for artificial intelligence, “shtuchniy intelekt.”
