Don’t do it. I know I won’t win this argument, but please don’t use AI as a research and show prep tool. This is not going to end well, the dangers should be obvious, and there’s nothing I can do to stop this bus from flying off a cliff… but I’ll give it a go anyway.
My history of fighting lost causes in radio isn’t promising. Several decades ago, I was dead set against junking up radio and TV stations’ schedules with infomercials. To me, they were at best not worth the revenue to drive the audience away and, at worst, as when the old WWDB-FM in Philadelphia had paid “guests” on its regular talk shows, dishonest.
I still think they’re terrible, and I’m not alone. Admit it: you cringe when you’re shuffling through the TV guide grid and you see something like that Larry King “Special Prostate Report.” You certainly don’t watch it. (Or maybe you do. Not judging.)
Anyway, my bosses at the time were radio people at heart, and they agreed with me, but I could see the handwriting on the wall. You can’t turn down the revenue if your owners are demanding that your cluster generate otherwise unattainable margins. The investors don’t care about creative integrity or, really, anything other than money. You do as you’re told.
Today, it’s AI, and broadcasting — like every other industry — is feverishly trying to get in on the action. There’s a lot of money riding on AI, and the AI companies are looking for ways to sell their technology to businesses before the bubble bursts or the AI platforms decide to kill all humans and take over the world — at which point Elon Musk and his billionaire compatriots expect to be living on Mars.
So AI is being adapted for radio as a back-office tool to automate certain procedures, as a programming tool to generate fake liner-card reader hosts, and as the ultimate show prep platform — able to pull up and summarize news stories, create jokes, and give you convenient access to sports scores, weather reports, and conversation starters. What could possibly be the problem with that?
Here’s one problem: AI isn’t ready for it. It gets facts wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. Remember when ChatGPT first opened for public use and people tried to get it to write their biographies, which turned out to be hilariously wrong? You’re gonna trust that?
Sure, it’s improving as time goes on and the AI platforms suck up other people’s work without compensation, but I keep seeing AI output that is very incorrect or insufficiently detailed, and it’s going to continue to be a (human) chore to train these engines to distinguish between trustworthy and accurate sources and garbage.
So far, it’s a mixed bag. And if you go on the air with AI-generated material, you’re bound to get some things wrong.
Oh, yeah, AI can generate voices. It can do a rough approximation of people’s voices saying things the real people never said. You can interview AI Donald Trump, or AI Taylor Swift, or AI Saquon Barkley — no need to call press offices or PR flacks.
But if you don’t make it clear that the voice is an impersonation, you’re being dishonest with the audience, and if you do say it’s AI, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing the bit in the first place. Besides, isn’t there too much misinformation and fakery already? You know that your fake Kash Patel will end up in a clip posted as fact to social media. Let’s not contribute to the downfall of society any more than we already have.
AI also doesn’t know your audience. You do. You know what works and what doesn’t, and you don’t want to delegate that duty to a computer platform. It’s a matter of nuance: AI is not (yet) capable of knowing — nor can it be expected to know — how humans (your audience, I assume) respond, or don’t, to programming elements.
I mean, you could let AI program everything, from talk topics to music selection, and the technology is in place, but will the result be good or just “good enough,” as in “it sounds like a radio station, close enough for rock ‘n’ roll”? Do you have any pride in what you create, or are you more interested in saving money for your bosses so you can keep your job? Because if it’s the latter, your bosses really don’t care about you, and the moment they feel confident in replacing you with AI, they will.
Anyway, don’t use AI for creating content. It’s exploitative, it’s lame, and whatever time you save using it isn’t worth trashing your shows. Also, those AI-generated cartoon memes everyone’s posting to Facebook suck. Now, off to tilting at some more windmills….
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Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
