Japan’s Nippon TV welcomed its first-ever Android employee in April.

The multi-lingual Erica Aoi debuted as anchor on the daily show PON!, and will be followed this spring by an appearance as an assistant in the Sensors segment of digital trends programme Chill TV.

She is also scheduled to deliver English-language news. “People are asking if artificial intelligence (AI) will take away the jobs of humans... We believe that when our employees’ creative outputs synergise with technologies, innovations in content creation come to life. We are not aiming for alternatives to humans, but for enhancements in creativity that are the result of androids working together with people,” says Hiroyuki Fukuda, Nippon TV operating officer and programming division president.

Aoi was created in a project between Osaka University, Kyoto University, and the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International’s Japan Science and Technology Agency Strategic Basic Research Programs.

Originally published in the print issue published for the Asia Pacific Pay TV Operators Summit (APOS) in Bali in April 2018