GENEVA (AP) — The voice sounds like a famous person, the music features trendy dance beats and hip-hop syncopation, and the jokes and laughter are infectious. But listeners at a quirky Swiss public radio station received repeated messages on Thursday. Today’s program was brought to you by artificial intelligence.
Three months old, the French station Couleur 3 (Color 3) advertises a one-day experiment with voice clones of five real human presenters. It is almost entirely composed of computers, not humans. According to the broadcaster, AI controlled the airwaves from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Listeners he received reminders every 20 minutes.
“AI is sweeping your favorite radio,” said a calm, raspy female voice, with an eerie sci-fi track blaring in the background.
“For thirteen hours our digital avatar has taken the reins, relentlessly broadcasting voices and messages across the airwaves,” said the voice, sometimes mocking listeners. The boundaries blur and it’s up to you to figure out what’s real and what’s fake.”
“Our voice clones and AI are here to sway, amaze and shake you. What’s more, this text was also written by a robot.”
ChatGPT and other “generative AI” tools that exploded last fall often caused fear, confusion, fascination, laughter and worry about their long-term economic, cultural, social and even political implications. Some musicians complain that AI preyed on their style.
In the face of such defiance, Swiss broadcasters under the public broadcaster Radio Television Switzerland are raising concerns about AI, embracing it and trying to demystify it.
Station head Antoine Martone said Couleur 3 could get away with the experiment because it was already known to be “provocative”.
Some may fear that the project will be the first step toward human obsolescence on air, but it also involves layoffs and could undermine journalism.
“If we were ostriches…we would put our heads in the sand and say, ‘Mon Dieu, there’s new technology! We’re all going to die! Then yeah, like it or not, We will die because it (AI) will come,” Multone said over the phone.
Some go even further, like Seven Hills, Ohio-based media company Futuri, which has rolled out its AI-powered RadioGPT.
In Couleur 3, the presenter’s voice was cloned with the help of software company Respeecher. Respeecher works with Hollywood studios, and its team is primarily based in Ukraine, according to the company’s website.
The station manager says it took three months for the AI to understand the station’s needs and be able to adopt a quirky, offbeat vibe. The tracks that aired during the day were at least partially composed by AI, and some were created entirely by AI. “It’s also the first time,” he says Multone. AI was behind the voice that sang the song that aired in the morning, and in the afternoon he played the DJ. A selection of copyrighted music.
To avoid confusion with today’s actual news, a synthetic voice (indistinguishable from a real person) provided top-time breaking news that was too futuristic to be believed. to noise complaints. Opening of the first underwater restaurant on Lake Zurich. An extraterrestrial tourist who mistook a swan in a Swiss lake for an inflatable toy.
The AI was instructed to create news likely to be read in 2070.
Multone acknowledged that there was a lot of debate among staff about whether or not to do it, saying, “If I knew my team wasn’t 100% willing to try, I wouldn’t be prepared to cancel the project.” was made.”
Hundreds of messages flooded the stations in the morning just after the program started, according to Swiss public radio. Some complained about boring jokes. Another listener admitted to being stunned and confused. One critic called the project a waste of time for the publicly funded station.
“The main feedback we get is, in 90% of the messages, ‘It’s cool, but it lacks the human element. There will be less,” said Maltone, noting that an on-air discussion about the experiment was scheduled for Friday — by real people.
“A lot of the messages were saying, ‘Give me my human back!'” he said.
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