Polish radio station abandons use of AI ‘presenters’ following outcry

A Polish radio station stated Monday that it has ended an “experiment” that concerned utilizing AI-generated “presenters” as a substitute of actual journalists after the transfer sparked an outcry.

Weeks after dismissing its journalists, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched final week utilizing digital characters created by AI as its presenters.

Throughout Poland, individuals have been indignant, expressing fears that people have been being changed by AI.

The station’s editor, Marcin Pulit, stated in an announcement Monday that the intention had been to spark a debate about artificial intelligence, and that it had succeeded. He stated the experiment had been meant to final three months however that it noticed no purpose to go on.

“After every week, we had collected so many observations, opinions, and conclusions that we determined that its continuation was pointless,” Pulit wrote.

He stated the station was “stunned by the extent of emotion that accompanied this experiment, attributing to us non-existent intentions and actions, harsh judgments formulated on the premise of false experiences.”

The station within the southern metropolis of Krakow had stated its avatars have been designed to achieve youthful listeners by talking about cultural, artwork and social points together with the issues of LGBTQ+ individuals. The change final week acquired nationwide consideration after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and movie critic who till lately hosted a present on the station, launched a petition calling for the station to finish the experiment and printed an open letter protesting “the alternative of staff with synthetic intelligence.”

“It’s a harmful precedent that hits us all,” he wrote, and argued it may open the way in which “to a world wherein skilled staff related to the media sector for years and folks employed in inventive industries might be changed by machines.”

Greater than 23,000 signed the petition.

Final Tuesday the station broadcast an “interview” carried out by an AI-generated presenter with a voice pretending to be Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.

Earlier than canceling the experiment, the station had been planning an interview with Polish statesman Jozef Piłsudski, who died in 1935.