A Sydney radio station has been using an AI-generated host for about six months without disclosing it – and was not legally obliged to.
It was revealed last week that Australian Radio Network’s (ARN) Sydney-based CADA station, which broadcasts across western Sydney and is available online and through the iHeartRadio app, had created and deployed an AI host for its Workdays with Thy slot.
The artificial host known as “Thy” is on-air at 11am each weekday to present four hours of hip-hop, but at no point during the show, nor anywhere on the ARN website, is the use of AI disclosed.
After initial questioning from Stephanie Coombes in The Carpet newsletter, it was revealed that the station used ElevenLabs – a generative AI audio platform that transforms text into speech – to create Thy, whose likeness and voice were cloned from a real employee in the ARN finance team.
An ARN spokesperson said the company was exploring how new technology could enhance the listener experience.
I think a lot of the job is a hold over from a pre Internet era. Yes, stations do you have to regularly state what channel you’re listening to, but before the Internet DJs provided pretty useful information regarding what was playing. You couldn’t just look up on the fly the lyrics of a song to find out the name or the band, or if they were playing in your area.
DJs used to give listeners that information, and potentially provide additional context or similar bands that would be of interest. It was hard to get that information at the time. I know some relatively young people who still listen to DJ morning shows, but they listen for the skits And humor, not for the music insights. At this point, I don’t think there’s really much need for them, but I imagine nobody wants to be the first to fully get rid of them. I imagine people are upset about this, but I don’t know that they would be any less upset if they just decided to do away with DJs altogether.
Not just about the music, either. You’d also get local traffic and weather occasionally, and if there was some important news to report on, that would take precedence.
You don’t get that with the streaming service of your choosing.
Very true. I remember people listening to a local station not because of their music, but they had the best traffic coverage. It was the generic top billboard songs station, so maybe that skewed perception, but plenty of people only tuned in on their way to work for the traffic and would listen to other stations if given the option otherwise. I totally forgot about that.
I suppose mapping applications provide pretty good traffic for literally where you are driving, so there’s that. Weather is on there, too, if you want it.
It’s the “sudden important news story” bit that isn’t covered yet, I think.
How many “sudden important news stories” are there really? Like, there was a time when they’d interrupt your program to let you know about the Pope dying or a terrorist attack, but the truth is that if you’re sitting at home watching TV, that news isn’t actually important enough to interrupt your show.
The only actual important immediate news you need are severe weather alerts for earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, etc. And most countries have mobile notification systems for that now, and can target the specific impacted region instead of half the country.