Radio station gets part-time AI DJ based on its midday host

Live 95.5, a radio station in Portland, Oregon, announced Tuesday that its midday host Ashley Elzinga will broadcast a cloned version of her voice — aka “AI Ashley” — to listeners every day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. They’ll be using Futuri Media’s “RadioGPT,” an AI-powered tool that uses GPT-4 to generate a script based on trending news and reads it with a synthetic voice.

The radio station noted that AI Ashley isn’t fully replacing “traditional Ashley,” which has been a huge concern for a lot of local DJs. Radio stations have cut down their broadcasts in recent years due to rising costs or in a shift to embrace tech like AI. In 2020, iHeartMediarestructured its organization, laid off hundreds of people nationwide and invested in artificial intelligence.

Live 95.5’s parent company, Alpha Media, assured us that Elzinga would not be losing her job and would still be paid the same salary.

We made history as the world's first radio station with an AI DJ! Our midday host Ashley has become AI Ashley! We can’t wait for you to meet Ashley, the world's first artificially intelligent DJ. As to the intelligence of our other DJ’s…we’ll save that for another post ;) pic.twitter.com/CtlMhYU0IO

— Live 95.5 (@live955) June 13, 2023

Full story over at TechCrunch.