A Polish radio station will use artificial intelligence instead of presenters in the future. The editor-in-chief calls this an experiment examining the social impact of AI, but it is also a fact that they save a lot of money.
OFF Radio Krakow, the online and DAB+ subsidiary of Radio Krakow, has announced that they are going full AI and launching new shows hosted by a Gen Z AI talking head trio, “Emi”, “Kuba” and “Alex”. Each of them has their own unique biography and personality – according to the station. “The content they (the MI presenters) provide is created by real journalists who use artificial intelligence tools for this purpose,” writes OFF’s editor-in-chief, Marcin Pulit, in the announcement. “After the text has been prepared, it is checked and authenticated by journalists, and then processed into a spoken voice”.
The same goes for the written stories on the site, Pulit said, and even the music selections that the MI hosts will play during the once-a-week “authors” music show. One of the first articles published on a site created entirely by AI is a interviewwhich was prepared by the deceased Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska and Emi about this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.
The decision to turn OFF Rádió Kraków into a fully AI-powered channel aimed at Generation Z Poles was made after the station fired a bunch of presenters and one of the fired former presenters started a petitionto force the radio to abandon its AI experiment. In the petition – which has already been signed by more than 21,000 people at the time of writing – Mateusz Demski claims that “about a dozen people” who worked at OFF Radio Krakow lost their jobs as the studio suddenly switched to an MI -centered platform. Demski blamed Puli for the decision, saying it exemplifies how, like events in Hollywood, creative industries are at great risk from AI.
“This ‘experiment’ is a blow not only to OFF journalists, but to our entire community,” said Demski. “The case of OFF Radio Krakow is an important reminder for the entire industry.” Pulit, however, said none of those fired were removed because of AI. “These were guest collaborators who produced a show for us once a week” – quoted Pulitot is the Polish edition of Business Insider. “The contracts expired not because artificial intelligence was introduced, but because this formula does not work”.
The actual reason – he wrote in the announcement – was that we wanted to deal with the question of what artificial intelligence brings to society – both in a good and bad sense. “We want to examine how the development of artificial intelligence can affect culture, media, journalism, society,” wrote Pulit. “Is artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat for media, radio and journalism? To this question we are looking for the answer”.
Polish media is going through a big transformation right now, and that probably has more to do with this situation than anything else right now. When current Prime Minister Donald Tusk came to power late last year, one of his promises was to depoliticize Poland’s public service media, which was widely used by the previous right-wing government to spread state propaganda. According to this, 17 different regional public radio stations – including the Krakow radio station – were liquidated and forced to reorganize. Pulit – who is currently the managing director of OFF Radio Krakow, is also the controller of the wider Radio Krakow group, and has been sounding the alarm about the station’s finances for some time.
Pulit told Polish media earlier this year that Radio Krakow was in such dire straits that he wasn’t sure the tax could pay its employees. However, in the same interview, he said he has no plans to fire anyone. “Someone has to do this mission program, so I don’t plan to look to people for the savings,” Pulit told Poland’s Onet. The contributors aren’t really employees, of course, so Pulit obviously didn’t see a problem in favoring some cool new digital hosts. eliminate them. But they are also only temporary employees – OFF Radio Krakow does not intend to continue broadcasting in this way. “The project is bound by a time limit,” noted Pulit. “It won’t take more than three months and it will be evaluated.” Emi, Kuba and Alex would probably be very sad to know this.
Source: sg.hu
