This chapter explores how social media platforms have disrupted news agencies and how Xinhua, China’s state-owned news agency, has responded to digital disruption, especially to the fast-growing popularity of social media and short-form video platforms. This chapter focuses on Xinhua’s collaboration with China’s digital tech giant, Alibaba. Xinhua Zhiyun, a joint venture between the two, was officially established in June 2017. Through Xinhua Zhiyun, Xinhua has sought to accelerate its digital transition, while trying to monetise the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other new communication technologies in order to fund its own digitalisation plans. In December 2018 Xinhua Zhiyun officially launched a novel digital platform, called ‘Media Brain’. Media Brain functions as an AI-facilitated multimedia platform, which is expected to enable Xinhua to automate the entire editorial process, notably the production of short videos, and ultimately transform Xinhua’s newsrooms and business flows. From Xinhua’s perspective, competition from social media and short-video platforms was the main strategic drive behind the launch of the new digital platform. Xinhua’s collaboration with Alibaba exemplifies some efficiency-enhancing uses of AI technologies in newsrooms, including automating short news videos for online and mobile consumption and livestreaming of conferences and events. However, the long-term implications of AI adoption for journalistic practice remain uncertain at the time of writing, and certainly deserve further study. For the time being, AI appears to enable journalists to focus on the types of work where humans cannot easily be replaced by robots. This also arguably applies to Xinhua’s new digital platform, Media Brain. However, journalists are under increasing pressure to keep their jobs while improving their digital literacy in an increasingly competitive environment. What is at stake in the shift to AI-driven automation within newsrooms is not only the sustainability of traditional news providers such as national news agencies, but also the future of journalism as a whole in a fast-changing environment, both within and outside China.

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