Krakow internet radio station Off Radio has introduced an innovation that many journalists were afraid of. This public radio station’s channel is now created almost entirely by artificial intelligence. The live presenters were replaced by three characters created by AI. More than a dozen people are reported to have lost their jobs as a result of the change.
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The Off Radio Kraków channel, which has been broadcast on the Internet since October 22, is hosted by characters created by artificial intelligence: 20-year-old Amy (short for Emilia), 22-year-old Kuba (Jakub) and 23-year-old Alex, each with their own story and your character. Amy is a journalism student, Cuba is an audio engineering student, and Alex is a licensed psychologist. These are not new journalists, but characters created by artificial intelligence. They will run programs that were previously created by a team of about a dozen employees.
«The new version of the OFF Radio Kraków channel is a research and media experiment that tries to diagnose and answer the question of what impact the development of artificial intelligence can have on culture, media, journalism and society,” says the station’s website.
The innovation caused a stormy reaction in the media environment. The published open letter states that “thanks to the new formula of the radio station, at the beginning of September, about a dozen people – valuable and experienced journalists, creators and musicians of Krakow culture – lost their jobs. Some of them worked on the creation, development and co-creation of the OFF Radio Kraków editorial team.” By October 23, the letter had already been signed by more than 15 thousand people who do not want to be the “object of the experiment.”
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Current Off Radio editor-in-chief Marcin Pulit claims that “no one was fired from Radio Krakow due to the introduction of artificial intelligence tools.” According to him, “These were invited employees who did programs for us once a week. The contracts expired not because artificial intelligence was introduced, but because the formula didn’t work because it essentially overlapped with two other programs and had no scale, and the station’s audience was close to zero.”
Pulit emphasized that AI anchors are simply tools used by real journalists. He said that some of the original music programs were broadcast on Radio Krakow Kultura, and one on the main channel of the radio station. “We still have two full-time employees – on the main channel and on Radio Krakow Kultura,” Pulit explained.
The problem was brought to the attention of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Information Technology Krzysztof Gawkowski, who pointed out the urgent need to regulate the field of AI: “Although I am a fan of the development of AI, I believe that we are increasingly going beyond specific boundaries. The use of AI should be for people, not against them!