Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
AI

Polish Radio Station Replaces Journalists With AI 'Presenters' 29

OFF Radio Krakow sparked controversy by replacing its journalists with AI-generated presenters in an experiment to attract younger audiences. CNN Business reports: Weeks after letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, with what it said was âoethe first experiment in Poland in which journalists ... are virtual characters created by AI." The station in the southern city of Krakow said its three avatars are designed to reach younger listeners by speaking about cultural, art and social issues including the concerns of LGBTQ+ people. "Is artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat to media, radio and journalism? We will seek answers to this question," the station head, Marcin Pulit, wrote in a statement.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Polish Radio Station Replaces Journalists With AI 'Presenters'

Comments Filter:
  • Will they have a British accent and end every report with "Ananova dot com"?
  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @08:11AM (#64893197)

    Just what we need - "news" that hasn't been properly fact-checked and is ripe for manipulation by hackers. Unless, of course, the "AIs" are just the voices, and they're being fed news by more traditional sources.

    But if that's the case, why get rid of the original journalists? Oh yeah, the "younger audience". This move smacks of desperation dressed up as boldness. I'm reluctant to predict failure, but I sure hope it fails, and fails hard.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      But if that's the case, why get rid of the original journalists?

      You could just RTFA:

      Pulit insisted that no journalists were fired because of AI but because its listenership “was close to zero.”

      That said, if you are going to replace your newscasters with AI, why go normal? Why go human at all? Why not take it fully surreal while you're at it?

      ANTHROPOMORPHIC WEATHERVANE [creaking south]: And now, our top story tonight... SQUEAK... UN Secretary General Guterres faces fierce criticism for... CREA

      • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @09:14AM (#64893319)

        If they have nearly no audience, I can't see how replacing the "journalists" (LOL) would help. Especially if they're trying to grab younger listeners. What younger folks listen to radio? What younger folks know what radio is?

        This smacks of "minimal investment to continue a dying medium."

      • Hmm, that news report you suggest with anthropomorphic weathervane and such, that certainly does sound like it would be interesting to see.... too bad it is a radio station.
    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      People are a liability.

      I could tell you about the radio DJs in the UK of the 80's but it's not a very palatable story.

      If all someone is doing is riffing for a few seconds to read out a headline or what track is coming next, it's a huge expense - what's a prime-time DJ on in terms of salary? Pensions? Plus the risk of a scandal, etc.

      And do people really care if it's not a talk show, but just another radio station? No, not really.

      It's go nothing to do with younger audiences. They hate AI just as much as w

  • by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @08:18AM (#64893215) Homepage Journal

    Sounds like those klauns down in parlament are at it again, what a bunch of klauns

  • At least with an AI, you don't need leverage or bribery to get it to say what you want it to say.
  • Use real human journalists to direct AI and review / edit the results, then have user-customizable avatars do the reporting.

    If I want a couple of porn stars to give me the news while they give each other the business, or maybe a giant green space llama with a stutter... Who cares?

  • Sports and music radio hopped on this bandwagon a long time ago. CGI "news personalities" are a lot easier to deal with and you don't have to pay them a salary so... Once the technology existed to do without human news reader it was inevitable that the managers would try to replace them.
  • News Reading is a skill for which people expect to get paid. Good ones tend to become somewhat of celebrities and demand to get paid well. For television, AI News Readers probably aren't there yet. But for radio, you can use an AI without the risk of runaway payroll. There are many jobs for which the primary requirements are to be engaging and, if seen, beautiful. Once somebody has a following, they can demand exorbitant money. Hence part of the reason that so many people are willing to scrape through
    • News Reading is a skill for which people expect to get paid. Good ones tend to become somewhat of celebrities and demand to get paid well. For television, AI News Readers probably aren't there yet. But for radio, you can use an AI without the risk of runaway payroll. There are many jobs for which the primary requirements are to be engaging and, if seen, beautiful. Once somebody has a following, they can demand exorbitant money. Hence part of the reason that so many people are willing to scrape through life trying to become models or actors or even radio personalities. In addition to the high costs, they also tend to get caught up in scandals that can negatively reflect on their employers. Using an AI is lower risk and has cost certainty. The job of news *gathering* is not something an AI can do very well. But to voice it on the radio seems like an ideal use of AI if the market will accept it.

      Not really, I think you're missing a critical part of the news reader which is reputation. Even though they don't do the reporting they used to a lot of celebrity news readers will push back and even refuse when given a story they don't agree with, after all, it's their professional reputation that's on the line. And that's what they're really selling.

      The AI news reader might be just as attractive and engaging, but they're fundamentally a mask, there's no one to hold accountable, there's no one to trust, an

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @09:13AM (#64893317)

    A "presenter" is merely a person facing the camera (or simply talking into a microphone if it's radio) and reading and speaking aloud some text from a prompter. I've done it myself many times back in my college radio days. It can be a little tricky, not everyone can read a paragraph of text and simultaneously speak it without fumbling. Also you have to read with the appropriate intonation. You can't just say the words in a monotone or let it sound like you are reading. But it definitely isn't rocket science, nor is it particularly creative other than getting the phrasing right. I wouldn't call it journalism except in the loosest definition.

    I can see how some software could generate the voice and the corresponding avatar that will do an acceptably good job. You don't even have to do it in real time, the software can take as much time as needed beforehand and create a recording that gets played out on-air later as they piece the show together.

    • There is a story about Orson Wells where he is confronted by a woman who is a local news reader. She accuses him of polluting/diluting the power of the news with his War of the Worlds presentation. He replies that she's no journalist either, merely an actress reading the news.

      Personally, I'm not a fan of what passes for modern journalism (fascist news isn't news: it's propaganda). So, they had me at "replaces journalists" but there are no scare quotes big enough for "journalist" these days.
      • Except that most prominent news anchors rose through the ranks and were indeed journalists. Ie, Dan Rather in Vietnam, he wasn't reading scripts, or even reading news paragraphs given by other people, he was finding the news and reporting it from the field. Many news stations don't bother as much any more, because there's not enough local news to fill up a half hour, so they're mostly reading out state and national news, but there are still plenty that do real news and even their presenters are involved i

  • by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @09:30AM (#64893347)

    I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I hear an AI-generated voice, I immediately stop watching or listening to whatever it is that is using the voice. It's just nails on a chalkboard for me. Unfortunately, this has become an increasingly common event (e.g., a lot of content producers on Youtube have started using AI voices).

    • It's going to be a glorious day once you realize that one of those voices you thought weren't AI are actually AI. It's just a matter of when not if. I also hate AI voices but they are getting so much better, it's getting harder and harder to spot. There's a bunch of Wh40k lore channels on YouTube done by AI voices and although I still prefer people, they all have their cadence, speech patterns, timbre etc. And are dangerously getting closer to a point I could listen to one of them. This will slowly get in
      • Oh, for sure. I've already been fooled once by a particularly good AI voice with a sort of middle-class English accent (I think it took about thirty seconds before I caught on). But that just makes it worse!

  • ...in the olympics of crap
    While AI research shows great promise as a tool to solve hard problems, investors and managers simply want to replace people with robots. AI companies respond by offering crap generators that can quickly and cheaply generate unlimited quantities of crap. I hope there is a strong backlash, but the hype is strong and we may end up buried in crap

  • You can direct AI to say whatever you want it to say, regardless of it being the truth, and no pesky human conscience, ethics, or morals to get in the way, so I'd say that corporate types, not to mention governments, would just love news and other media presenters to be AI instead of humans.
    Our species really is stupid and more and more I wonder if we even deserve to survive. We keep doing things to shoot ourselves in the foot, and some people think those are good things even when the outcome is overall ba
  • Is there a point where the principles driving model collapse hit the culture itself? I can imagine that humans taking in too much AI generated nonsense would essentially suffer a loss in creative and intellectual stimulation that becomes problematic, if not specifically catastrophic.

As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.

Working...