The story doing the rounds this week is that an ai «bot» called Thy is running a four hour radio show on Australias CADA channel. It’s hit the mainstream press and is reported by The Verge, The Independent and The Sydney Morning Herald, to name few.
Something smelled fishy
This was revealed by some intrepid digging by Stephanie at The Carpet, who found that the new presenter on Australia’s CADA radio station only had two pictures of her online, lacked a social media presence and rarely appeared on air.
It was then disclosed that this is the voice of «an employee in the company’s financial department» laden onto a text-to-speech tool from ElevenLabs, as reported by The Verge.
Still real people doing real work
On her show’s presentation page it says that:
— Curated by our music experts, these are the songs that are charting or on the cusp of blowing up – hear it first with Thy so you can boast to your friends and say you were all over it first.
The AI voice model in question is just a simple text-to-speech tool, so, like in traditional radio, producers are writing what is being said on air and music experts are picking the songs. All the AI does is provide the tone of voice for reading cues between songs — the classic presenter work in radio.
The unsung heroes of radio shows are the people you never hear about; it’s the music producers picking the tracks, the showrunners who set the agenda, book guests and write the content, and then engineers who bring it all together. These are the people who make it all happen.
Don’t feel threatened just yet
So, yes, while this proves that the presenter’s role is being augmented by AI tools, the show is still being carried on by the traditional radio know-how and the human teams behind it.
Before you go saying that «Ai running the show,» remember that this is simply a text-to-speech tool, not an entire modern AI. When AI gets deployed to do the creative work or the writing or the picking of songs, that’s when it’s time to worry.
Until then, this radio station managed so save about $30,000 of salary from one presenter during off-peak hours when listeners are mostly at work or at school.
Adding to that, there’s this statement from CADA to The Independent, indicating even that isn’t going to well:
“This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and while the trial has offered valuable insights, it’s also reinforced the unique value that personalities bring to creating truly compelling content.”