[Courtesy of KBS]
[Courtesy of KBS]

AI-read news bulletins are already airing on radio, and a sweeping historical drama series produced with AI assistance is set to reach television viewers this fall — a sign of how rapidly the broadcasting industry is changing in the AI era.

KBS held an opening ceremony Monday for "AI Production," a dedicated hub for generative AI-based broadcast production, formally launching a support system designed to bring AI technology into real production environments.

The facility is built to support AI use across the full content pipeline, from initial planning through production. Its functions include AI content planning, production consulting, AI workflow development, quality control and AI production education.

Through the hub, KBS plans to create an environment where production teams can efficiently develop AI-based content, strengthening the broadcaster's overall production competitiveness.

The first major project to come out of AI Production is "Great King Munmu," a large-scale historical drama series scheduled to air in November. The series depicts how the small kingdom of Silla unified the Three Kingdoms through diplomacy and military force, with Jang Hyeok, Lee Hyeon-uk and Park Seong-ung in lead roles.

KBS plans to apply AI technology to "Great King Munmu" for crowd scenes in large-scale war sequences, pre-visualization and alternative production of scenes that are difficult or dangerous to shoot, and the recreation of fire sequences.

The goal is to improve on-set safety and production efficiency while raising the realism and visual quality of large-scale scenes that would have been difficult to achieve through conventional production methods.

The announcer division and the news and current affairs bureau are also actively joining the broadcaster's company-wide push to develop and deploy AI.

KBS plans to use AI voices modeled on its announcers' voices in radio news and other programming. More than 10 announcers have agreed to have their voices used in developing and deploying AI voice synthesis technology, according to KBS.

The news and current affairs bureau will begin a pilot rollout of a text-to-speech report system on "News 12" starting Monday, Aug. 10, allowing AI to learn individual reporters' voices and automatically generate broadcast scripts in each reporter's voice. However, the technology will only be used for reporters who voluntarily register their own voices.

"AI Production will serve as an innovation hub that combines KBS's creativity with AI technology to produce more competitive content," KBS President Park Jang-beom said. "We will continuously advance our AI-based production environment and grow into a public broadcaster that leads the AI era."


balme@heraldcorp.com