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Like my mini-docs, my newsletter explores the hyphen between two topics through the lens of Latino culture. In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

Entravision’s newest anchor doesn’t have a last name, and that’s by design.

Last week, I made a video about LÍA, Entravision’s new AI-generated news anchor. LÍA stands for “Latina Inteligencia Artifical” and is part of Entravision’s new Spanish-language streaming platform, Entravision AHORA.

I reached out to the company’s communications team for comment before publishing the video, but I didn’t hear back.

Within hours of publishing the video, the president of Entravision Media, Maria Martinez-Guzman, got my phone number from a former co-worker of mine (you can tell she’s a journalist), called me and offered to arrange a meeting with the team behind LÍA to answer any questions I had about how the AI news anchor worked. She called it an “exclusive,” so I’m calling it that, too.

I’ve since learned that LÍA is not the only AI-generated element on Entravision AHORA. The show open for “Si Usted Viera Lo Que Viera,” which shows anchor Jorge Viera running a marathon and dancing at a concert, has footage that is AI-generated. The soundtrack and voiceovers that ask the viewer trivia questions are also generated using AI.

What follows is the conversation I had with Maria Martinez-Guzman, LeaAnna Hernandez, EVP of AI Strategy, and Jorge Viera, anchor (and LÍA’s co-anchor). The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Some of the lines were translated from Spanish, but most of the conversation transpired in English. The conversation shows how news executives and journalists are thinking as they toe the line between journalistic ethics, bottom lines, a changing media industry and the push for innovation—all while navigating the sea of public opinion.

Fernando Hurtado: I watched the first couple of episodes of “Si Usted Viera Lo Que Viera” this week. I want to talk about the segment LÍA presented yesterday. The segment she did was about how to spot AI-generated videos. Maria, can you explain editorially how a segment like that comes to be? Who's doing the research? Who's doing the writing?

Maria Martinez Guzman, president of Entravision Media: That's a great question, Fernando. It's actually how you would go about it in any news-gathering process in a newsroom. In the morning, we talk about what the reporters are going to cover, what the anchors are going to cover, what is LÍA—what part of a story—how she's going be involved in the story. So Jorge [Viera] is the presenter, the anchor, the journalist. So we ask, "How do we complement what he's doing? Can she complement the story basically?” That that's how we think about it. And then we go back and forth. Is it a story about a crime? Is it a story about Puerto Ricans? Is it a story that’s data-driven? We decide what she's going say. That is the facts, right?… Anything that is human-like, anything that you actually have to go to the street and get the facts or investigate, she obviously is not going to do any of that.

Fernando Hurtado: Could she be generating that first draft of that script?

Maria Martinez Guzman, president of Entravision Media: I'm not going to lie to you. Right now, it is very scripted because we are putting guardrails. I am a longtime journalist. I've been doing this for 30 years, so I want to make sure that until we feel comfortable in the newsroom to kind of let a little bit of the guardrails down that everything is as scripted as possible from our end.

Fernando Hurtado: Jorge, you recently posted a video of LÍA on Instagram. The response, objectively, was overwhelmingly critical. People were saying she is taking away jobs from human journalists. Were you surprised by that response?

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Content creator and streamer Yoatzi Castro says she was sexually assaulted by a stranger at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and she captured the interaction during a live stream. The Anaheim Police Department said the man in the video was located, a statement was obtained and that the incident is under investigation.

The Latino midterms? So many pieces about the Latino vote this week. Expect more. El País writes that Latinos will be key to deciding who controls Congress when they vote in the midterms. Reuters writes that Republicans may have gerrymandered their way into “a Texas-sized Latino problem.” Another piece zeroes in on Republican Rep. María Elvira-Salazar’s district, specifically, as a litmus test for Latino voter disenchantment with President Donald Trump.

A U.S. citizen was injured during a mistaken detention by ICE near Chicago. The man suffered injuries to his head, neck and teeth. A witness said he spoke to the man after the confrontation. The man told him he had been in the emergency room the day prior and walking to the pharmacy to fill a prescription when he was assaulted by agents. [The New York Times]

“Latino Heritage Month has been quieter than ever.” That’s what Andrea Casanova, a content creator who works in AI, said about Hispanic Heritage Month brand deals. “I’ve been talking to some of the top Latina creators and talent managers, and the feedback is the same everywhere: Brands are quiet after the year we’ve had,” she says in the video.

This singer is blending genres and languages. Belle “La Malixita,” who is from the state of Yucatán in Mexico, was a finalist in the Mexico Canta competition. She sang “MALIXITA,” a song that fuses English, Spanish and Mayan languages.

I launched a Spanish version of my videos! This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. For now, it’s just my short-form videos. This video explains why I’m doing it. Follow @porfernandoh if you want Spanish-language content. I’ll still be making English-language videos; don’t worry!