Radio station gets part-time AI DJ based on its midday host

Live 95.5 in Portland, Oregon, announced Tuesday that its midday host Ashley Elzinga will broadcast a cloned version of her voice — dubbed “AI Ashley” — to listeners from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day. They’ll be employing Futuri Media’s “RadioGPT,” an AI-powered application that generates a screenplay based on trending news and reads it with a synthetic voice using GPT-4.

The radio station stated that AI Ashley is not completely replacing “traditional Ashley,” which has been a major source of concern for many local DJs. Radio stations have reduced their broadcasts in recent years due to rising costs or a shift towards embracing technology such as AI. iHeartMedia overhauled its organisation in 2020, lay off hundreds of employees around the country, and invested in artificial intelligence.

Alpha Media, the parent business of Live 95.5, informed us that Elzinga would not lose her position and would continue to be paid the same pay.

“It’s a hybrid situation where we’ll have traditional Ashley on during some segments and AI Ashley on during other segments,” revealed Phil Becker, Alpha Media EVP of Content, to TechCrunch. “In an instance where AI Ashley would be broadcasting, the traditional Ashley might be doing something in the community, managing social posts, working on digital assets, or any of the other elements that come with the job.”

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Becker also stated that Alpha Media does not use RadioGPT to save money. It’s intended to be a useful tool for radio hosts to have in their arsenal.

Listeners may be apprehensive of AI DJs since they have been listening to local radio personalities for years and do not want to hear a robotic-sounding voice on their way to work in the morning. That is why Live 95.5 trained the AI to sound like an actual radio DJ with whom the audience is already familiar.

The voice is comparable to the actual thing but quite evident that it’s AI, as demonstrated in a tweet where Elzinga shows off her AI DJ counterpart. The synthetic voice also announces itself as AI Ashley, letting listeners know that they are hearing an AI and not a real person.

“One of the most important aspects of this is that we are open and honest with the listener.” “It is never our intention to deceive anyone,” Becker remarked.

Users on Twitter expressed their dissatisfaction with the latest decision. One person even claimed that the AI voice was disrespectful to the entire radio industry.

We made history as the world's first radio station with an AI DJ! Our midday host Ashley has become AI Ashley! We can’t wait for you to meet Ashley, the world's first artificially intelligent DJ. As to the intelligence of our other DJ’s…we’ll save that for another post 😉 pic.twitter.com/CtlMhYU0IO

— Live 95.5 (@live955) June 13, 2023

While Live 95.5 is one of the first radio stations to employ RadioGPT, it is far from the last. Another Portland-based radio station, Alpha Media’s KUFO Freedom 970, will use the AI technology as well.

Alpha Media is in charge of more than 200 radio stations in the United States. The company claims to be the world’s first radio broadcasting company to employ an AI DJ.

Rogers Sports & Media, which owns 55 radio stations and over 29 podcasts in Canada, is another Futuri partner.

When Futuri released the beta version of RadioGPT in February, many people questioned the AI technology’s implications. One major question was whether or not AI DJs may spread falsehoods. Fact-checking is not one of ChatGPT’s strong suits, and it has been known to “hallucinate,” which means it confidently feeds users with false information.

Users have criticised Bing and Google’s AI chatbots for making factual inaccuracies.

Because ChatGPT relies on human moderation, it’s critical that radio stations utilising RadioGPT have real humans checking the generated content.

Futuri’s technology searches over 250,000 news sources, as well as stories on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to determine which subjects are trending in the area. RadioGPT will take these hot stories and produce a script using GPT-3. Becker states that before the AI voices communicate the information to listeners in that location, a team of human moderators reviews and modifies the content.

“You’ll still need the original content creators touching it, checking it, proving it, and all of that,” Becker added.

Furthermore, Futuri CEO and founder Daniel Anstandig believes that precautions are in place to prevent hallucinogenic content from becoming widely available.

“Our AI is programmed to cross-check and reduce the occurrence of speculative or inaccurate content, which is sometimes referred to as ‘hallucination,'” says Anstandig. In addition, RadioGPT “confirms that any generated content does not contain any offensive material,” he said.