• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Who will be first in Seattle to put A.I. Ashley on the air?

I heard this for a bit this morning. Not being familiar enough with the real Ashley Z, I can't tell that her cadence feels off to me. I also did hear the NPR story mentioned above, and Robert Smith's cadence did feel a bit off. That being said, this tech is impressive, and I think the concerns of those who are worried about jobs in radio are completely valid, at least when it comes to music formats. You're still going to have most of your talk programs being produced by people, at least for now.
This has nothing to do with AI, but what really annoys me is stations that only let their jocks talk once per music set. Why even have hosts if they can only open the mic once per set to tell you what the station imaging has been constantly telling you for the past hour?
The AI phone ordering thing is already here, I called Domino's to order pizza last night and was directed through my order by an AI, and you could even hear typing on a computer.
 
michael hagerty said:
radioinsight.com

First Listen: Ashley Z: Live and AI

“Ashley Z” Elzinga is the first public test case of Futuri Media’s RadioGPT as a way of delivering AI radio
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
Click to expand...
I'm not sure there's a better way to bring 'talent' into a market, even if it's replacing VT'd Ashley with AI Ashley. The community is already familiar with how she's accomplishing a typical VT'd airshift. If the quirks between VT'd Ashley and AI Ashley are small/infrequent and are eliminated with more tweaking of the AI algorithm over time, I'm not so sure >90% of the audience is going to care.
 
fordranger797 said:
The main problem I see is that many radio companies are notoriously broke, cutthroat, or generally cheap. If they see an avenue to cut a real person out of the equation and replace a role with AI, they're probably going to try it. Personally, I see there being no replacement for live content brought forth by real people. A host that only does the basics may be substituted with AI, but AI is not a replacement for morning shows.
Click to expand...
I agree. This is neither what AI can actually do, nor is it anything of quality. AI is a major topic right now no matter what age, whether it's going to wipe humans off the planet, or catapult us into being The Jetson's.

Some Gen-Z from Traverse City gets her fifteen minutes of fame by using an on-line voice synthesizer make her sound like a robot. The curious might tune in to hear what AI sounds like and most don't realize, it isn't this. After they sample it, they'll go on about their lives with something else.
 
I know one of the Kalispell FMs uses Jennifer Narramore for weather, she's from The Storm Report. It's similar to Weatherology but NOT automatic/AI-like. They are personalized for each station and recorded. Dan Holiday runs the company and also does the Farmer's Almanac Radio Reports.
 
Why does the industry go down the idiot highway every time a technology shift happens? No one believed in the internet and now digital revenues are burying traditional media advertising in many markets (a station I worked at that had been on air since 1922 just went dark yesterday....50kw and you could hear it in Seattle!!)

In this case...why not keep the technology on the back burner and prepare it for use in cases like weekends where something huge breaks and a station could react -- unlike that scenario in Minot many years ago where everything was owned by iHeart and the town wasn't even given a bulletin about a local disaster because everything was tracked. Of course now, you can at least upload tracks remotely .... but STILL the example of "solve a problem" before "showing off something irrelevant" IS relevant.
 
Kelly A said:
So let me get this straight: Some PD/morning host from Traverse City, MI, has a gimmick where she uses a synthesized version of her voice, rather than just do a straight voicetrack?
That's the key descriptor here: Gimmick.
Max Headroom from the 80's comes to mind..
Click to expand...
Only it’s not the AI pitching New Coke but pitching their own mere existence.
 
Z100 could go into the Top 10 again in a couple months you never know… Live probably will get around a high-1 to low-2 share in a couple months to a few months.
 
The VTed mid day host playing games with a computer is not going to wiggle the ratings needle very much. And by "not very much" I mean literally not one bit. At all.

For the moment at least this is a gimmick. Time will tell, longer term. But gimmicks barely affect overall ratings.
 
The New Chico said:
The VTed mid day host playing games with a computer is not going to wiggle the ratings needle very much. And by "not very much" I mean literally not one bit. At all.

For the moment at least this is a gimmick. Time will tell, longer term. But gimmicks barely affect overall ratings.
Click to expand...
I think it's to drive curiosity cume from a 18+ demo. 'Hey I hear ChatGPT is doing radio now, need to check it out'. Of course this has nothing to do with Open AI, or either version of ChatGPT, but most people don't know that.
Look how much it's being talked about here, and how many of you sampled it. And that's the thing; best case is a quick cume sample, then nothing to hear..here.
 
fordranger797 said:
The main problem I see is that many radio companies are notoriously broke, cutthroat, or generally cheap. If they see an avenue to cut a real person out of the equation and replace a role with AI, they're probably going to try it. Personally, I see there being no replacement for live content brought forth by real people. A host that only does the basics may be substituted with AI, but AI is not a replacement for morning shows.
Click to expand...
Tech replacing people has always been the reality, not just in radio, but other industries as well. The driver is money. I worked in a company that may have been responsible for aiding radio stations and radio companies in reducing staff. And when I was working there, post 1996 Telecom (which occurred right when the tech boom was kicking in big time) a lot of stations were bought, their operations consolidated -- because the tech made such consolidated operations possible -- and jobs were lost. Eventually, increases in tech aided in my own job becoming redundant.

It's no different with the promise of AI.

Radio is not going to come bouncing back as the 'hot, new' medium. It's -- as KellyA mentioned a week or so ago -- a 'legacy' medium, and it's not going to start making tons more money. No matter which way the economy shifts, radio is going to have to watch the bottom line, and if AI can help some radio companies or operations save money, they'll use it, once the AI announcers sound seamless enough and real enough. The tech itself has come a long way, even in the past year.

If you don't think the tech has progressed (as AI Ashley's clips indicates), just check out Aisis, the AI version of Oasis. It's just a matter of time before such an 'artist' makes it to radio. Maybe even when there's an AI DJ to announce it.

The irony.....AI DJs announcing AI tracks produced by AI artists. All that will be needed is AI listeners.

Edit: Here's AISIS.:
 
Last edited:
PB Randolf said:
Pretty sure most on this board have little understanding of AI, who the real leaders are in the industry and NOT Microsoft or Amazon, the various versions / types of AI, or AGI, how to use the prompts and code successfuly to get the correct results - who makes the chips, what is Tensor Flow, PyTorch, or Keras, the ongoing battle for chips and what it really means moving forward for this industry but the world as a whole. You won't lose your job to AI, just to someone who knows how to use it better than you. The ONLY saving grace for radio is to return to HYPER local talent that connects with the audience. PERSONALITY radio.
Click to expand...
The idea of hyper-local, personality radio sounds great to some, but that's also expensive. Sooner or later, somebody has to pay the bills. And labor costs money.
 
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
unlike that scenario in Minot many years ago where everything was owned by iHeart and the town wasn't even given a bulletin about a local disaster because everything was tracked.
Click to expand...
First, it is "iHeart". Anything else is juvenile and tacky. (And the company was named "Clear Channel" when the event happened)

Second, the Minot situation was the fault of local and state government who had not trained people to activate the EAS in the event of an emergency. The Clear Channel stations were in full compliance. No station in a medium or small market has news staff on duty in the middle of the night, but the EAS gear was working and ready to relay emergency information... if anyone in that town was even awake at that time of the night.
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
Of course now, you can at least upload tracks remotely .... but STILL the example of "solve a problem" before "showing off something irrelevant" IS relevant.
Click to expand...
If the technology is better than a bland voice track done the traditional way, then it is an improvement.
 
boombox4 said:
The idea of hyper-local, personality radio sounds great to some, but that's also expensive. Sooner or later, somebody has to pay the bills. And labor costs money.
Click to expand...
The talent should be paid because that is real TALENT - what will go and should go will be these over paid bloated regional SVP's and PD's who "program" mulitpul stations. Sorry but when top CEOs and COO's who "get it wake up" to the cost saving measure "hey we don't need some PD progamming 3 stations and can use AI on G Selector" - BUH BYE and hello saving that 100K salary and benefits. These clown PD's really don't program anyways, it's just hit schedule on the ol G Selector and the "computer" does it for you already. AI can set up all the parameters and factor in "music flow", genre seperation, tempo, all of it.... IF you don't see the BIG E on eye chart then maybe it's time to get your eyes checked. For this medium to remain relevant and surive it will need REAL people to talk to REAL people. Last month alone 4k jobs in the US were lost to AI - is your's next? What's your plan for dealing with AI? How do you plan to use AI to leverage ROI, NTR, and other sales related oportunities?
 
This actually raises the question if the real Ashley is getting some sort of royalties for use of the synthetic voice (and it doesn't have to be terribly much, just a minor stipend). It'd be a lot less than whatever Alpha was paying her to VT over KBFF, although it also saves her the time to cut VT liners.

But I can't see how her voice would become entirely open source material with her consent and zero compensation. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
 
This reminds me a bit of the guy who made “Nothing Forever,” an AI based Seinfeld parody which was streamed on Twitch 24/7 until the account was ultimately banned. He programmed the characters to have similar mannerisms to Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. They would hang out in Jerry’s apartment, go to the cafe, and even check out Jerry’s standup routine.

It was all fun and games until the characters started to develop an actual awareness and fear of being stuck in a 24/7 loop. And then the situation got worse when the AI went haywire and started telling inappropriate jokes (entirely out of the blue). I wonder if that could happen with this radio AI too? It’s literally like a person, though a person should have a decent sense of awareness of what to say and what not to say if they’re employed by a major radio company.

There don’t appear to be any guards that keep AI from making up a mind of its own and saying whatever it wants. I’m assuming the creator of “Nothing Forever” added some code to make the characters talk about current events, but didn’t expect the content to get so dark that the account was banned.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom