Now we have the first News Station made up entirely of Virtual Avatar Reporters that scape the web and make their own news program….at least, that is what it sounds like.

"…That's the idea behind News at Seven, a project out of Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Laboratory. It's an automatic system that puts together a custom daily news show by pulling together images, videos, and blogs into a report delivered by a virtual news team. All of this takes place without human intervention.

News at Seven is completely customizable based on the user's preferences. The characters can be altered too. For example, you can elect to have sports stories presented by a player. The project will also build custom avatars to present the news. "

I wonder how long it will be till we have Virtual Actors to replace the real actors?